I Never Want to Move Again
By: C. M. Barrett
Tags: Grief And Loss, Attachment, Moving, Cats N Things, Transitions

Moving is considered to be one of the top five stressors. The others are divorce, death, major illness, and job loss.

This year I had both death and moving in my repertoire. I’ve written about my grieving the loss of my partner in other articles.

Moving is a different kind of experience. It has required me to grieve in motion, as I continue to try to handle feelings of disruption, dislocation, and rootlessness.

I Hate Boxes

The human mind — at least, my human mind — gets inventive in avoiding the true cause of anxiety. I, instead directly addressing my panic that I was going into terra incognita, developed a grudge against boxes.

I had moved about four years earlier, and at the time I’d said I’d never do it again, but I’d only half-believed myself. Now I am definite. I don’t even want to ever see a box again, which means I might have to break up with Amazon. (I got an order today, and though the box was small, the sight of it still caused me an anxiety attack.)

I started packing long before I needed to in practical terms. A nameless frenzy drove me, and I had packed many boxes before I began to understand it.

My packing delirium delighted the cats, who happily scaled mountains of boxes and made themselves at home in empty or semi-empty ones. While they celebrated their rightful ownership of all boxes, the apartment began to resemble a labyrinth, but not the spiritually enlightening kind. It was the bang-your-shins kind.

The boxes frightened me because when I got to my new home, I would have to unpack every one of them and find places for a collection of objects so vast it seemed obscene. I discovered, for example, that I owned ten pairs of scissors. (I can only find two of them now.)

Don’t Throw It Away

In the process of choosing what to keep and what to eliminate, I happened to discover boxes I hadn’t unpacked since the previous move. Despite my having lived without them for several years, they assumed sentimental value as soon as I saw them, and they joined me for the next journey.

They are currently all sitting in my shed. I will probably never open them. I have no explanation for this behavior. I’d like to say it’s intuitive knowing, but that sounds like blarney. I deceive myself enough without this kind of nonsense.

Discoveries That Might Well Have Remained Undiscovered

I began to realize that my packing behavior revealed deep character flaws.

I can simultaneously manage resistance and compulsion — although not well. Many mornings I wanted to lie in bed all day and pretend I wasn’t going anywhere. I realized that I had to force myself to pack. If I didn’t pack at least four boxes a day, I berated myself severely.

Do you really want to move? Well, you don’t act like it.Do you think these boxes are going to pack themselves? I don’t know about you, but when I hear my mother’s voice first thing in the morning, I’ll do anything to shut her up. Building a temple of boxes was the best way to honor her nagging spirit.

I am a hoarder. There, I’ve faced it and said it. I’m not as serious a case as the Collyer Brothers of Harlem, who died surrounded by 120 tons of possessions. (Read Homer and Langley, by E. L. Doctorow if this story interests — or horrifies — you.)

My hoarding is more of the “What if” variety.

What if one day I was terribly poor and had no clothes, and my keeping this shirt might make the difference?

What if one day they close all the libraries? I would need every book I own.

What if I wanted to have a dinner for 12 people? This will never happen, but in the world of imagination, all things are possible.

All things are equally possible in the world of scarcity and poverty mentalities fostered by parents who were children during the Great Depression. My mother could get ten uses out of a paper bag. She saved aluminum foil. If her voice rang loud and clear when it called me to get up and pack, it screamed when I threw something away.

However, the box towers were growing, and I needed a far more ruthless attitude about my possessions. Sometimes it hurt, especially when a book was involved, but I dropped many items into garbage bags or bags for Goodwill. The beautiful thing about this fortitude is that I only remember with longing a few of the things I threw away. The sad thing is that I remember those few things vividly and mourn their loss.

I am sentimental. I have clothing that I’ve owned for 35 years just because people (most of them dead) gave them to me. I have every photograph from every vacation I ever took. And that’s only the beginning.

I justified saving these things, saying that since I was being cruel enough to uproot myself, I deserved to have things that represented continuity. In the ongoing battle between me and me, I could adopt a very self-righteous tone.

The Horrors of Unpacking

Once I got to my new home, I wanted the boxes to disappear. The first night there, I couldn’t see across the living room. Two dear friends helped me unpack the next day, and that took care of half of the 40 boxes. (This does not count bags and suitcases.)

The boxes had to go, I told myself, before I could sink new roots. The biggest horror was unpacking something and then wanting it later. I muttered to myself, “I know I put it somewhere.” I could even summon up an image of where it was. Unfortunately, that image was always wrong.

Being a woman of a certain age, I wondered whether this move had taken me over the tipping point in terms of mental health. Here it was, the beginning of the end.

One incident in particular left me wondering.

Shortly before the move, I’d put some cat litter into the type of bag I usually got for bulk grains at the health food store. I took it to the new house and used it to fill a litter box there. The leftover litter I put . . . somewhere. Two weeks later I discovered that I’d mistaken it for a bag of oatmeal and put it in the refrigerator.

After the litter incident, I sat myself down and reminded myself that I had unpacked easily thousands of things. I was normal. I was human. I was adapting. I was beginning to enjoy my new home.

The Boxes are Gone

It took me three weeks, which some people informed me was remarkably speedy. I only know that I couldn’t look at another one. I waved good-bye to the last boxes when the garbage people came to pick up the trash. May they live happy recycled lives.

And so may I.