Moving Up {a sum of my parts and years in 421}
You see, this whole moving thing is new for me. I’ve never had roommates, unless you count my cousin Maria when I was 8; I’ve never had to provide solely for myself because if I wanted the dinner my dad made I could have it just by trotting up 13 steps and serving myself a plate; and I’ve never left my family for more than a week at a time—which acutely refutes my insistence that I am a very independent woman (really, I am!). 1) We moved to this house and then 2) eventually I moved to the basement and that’s 2 fingers: the number of times I have ever moved doesn’t even require two hands or much thought. Even though my new house is just 7 minutes from this house, a house I mostly grew up in, in a town I have grown to love for its people and its mountains, it is my first venture out alone.
This dark, seemingly scary basement housed me through a lot. My depression, my failed marriage, my siblings growing up, my dogs, my thoughts in all their wild forms… It bubbled over with everything that was me and was my sanctuary when I was in a depression and my inspiration when I was in a mania. My friends laughed with me here. They sang with me and danced with me and drank with me here. This is where I watched more movies and tv shows than I could ever tell you. And had conversations that were heart wrenching and beautiful and eloquent. Where I wrote poems and letters and resumes. I read about zombies and love and life here. I cried over boys here—elated and hopeless tears. This is where I thought seriously about suicide and all the ways I could commit suicide and…my room reminded me with pictures of my little brother, only 10 now, who he would be with a sister who had killed herself. I learned how to be alone here; a lesson that was hard learned and took all 23 years I have to learn it…In this little basement.
She is mine. And I am most certainly hers.
So as I sit here, in the dark of her swollen belly, half packed boxes strewn haphazardly in the way, the house sleeping above me, I can’t help but miss her and her contents already. This past year has been the hardest year of my life. Love was not enough. I discovered I was bipolar. I lost some dear friends (good news: I’m slowly gaining them back), I left my dream job and had no job too long for comfort, had lots of schooling but nothing to show for it other than a teetering pile of debt letters neatly scrawled out in my name, I got married in the midst of a September and am now planning a divorce for a cool September day—a fact most people didn’t even know, my car was broken into, my engagement ring turned out to be worth less than a fourth of what we paid for it, I became bitter and un-trusting and sad. I was the opposite of everything I ever envisioned for myself at 23, a month and a half shy of 24. By all accounts, you could even call me a failure.
But it was the insignificant things, the tiny, whispering victories that kept me here. The budding friendships, the late night musings turned to writings, a little vintage store, painting my nails, bettering my aesthetic, designing my first book cover, a baby named Oliver, dancing in my underwear late into the night, my bear-wolf-girl Tai, borrowing strength from the few people who held me in their hearts close enough to lend me some, empowering myself in any way I could, deciding to be myself more than ever even if that was awkward and weird and intense, falling in love and in like and learning to love those queasy little butterflies. It was minuscule stitches of time I strung together to find pockets of happiness I could live with until bigger things came—or hell!—until I went and found bigger things and drug them home with me.
This room? My room? She holds my tears and my hand and my heart. But the time came a long time ago to leave her, and even though I am at the tail end of a thunderous, brooding storm, I can see that there is a golden setting sun beyond these very dark clouds.