"i've got you"

the thing no one tells you about moving across the country is that it's HARD. or expensive. or hard and expensive. there are infinity things to do and pay for. or maybe everyone would tell you that, but i never bothered to ask, because i was so busy imagining myself browsing with nic at lowe's for the perfect soothing pale dusty blue wall color, playfully teasing each other, and reveling in the beautiful simplicity of our everyday life.

actually before that happens you have to box up all your things and live in heaping piles of crap you can't imagine why you kept and bring home pre-made salads for dinner only to realize you've already packed all your forks so you end up spooning wet gobs of lettuce into your mouth with your fingers. yes, the glamour has not quite set in.

and honestly that's really all quite dramatic and not so different from my everyday life, which is some version of haphazard chaos, to which i am quite accustomed. i did all the things well for the most part. i booked a u-haul a long time ago. i packed gradually. i made each one of 87 individual trips to goodwill on drives to and from work. i conscientiously disposed of things that could be used as materials for art projects by donating them to SCRAP. i donated unwanted books to the library. i ordered a backstock of my required monthly medications before my healthy san francisco insurance/ non-insurance expired. i sold furniture on craigslist. i donated unused canned food to a food bank. i spackled holes in the wall, painted, and wiped down bathroom walls. i had my car serviced. i renewed my cpr/ first aid certification, got a new tb test, revised my resume, and wrote a cover letter in anticipation of getting a new teaching job. i pumped myself up! i did it all! i'm proactive and i'm on it! I AM IN CONTROL!

this makes me sound mostly crazy and, honestly, i feel a little crazy. though being proactive is nice, i've basically been moving for two months and now that it's down to those last minutes i'm just ready to be done with the anticipation of moving and onto the new phase of actually living.

also, i did not do it all. in order to attach the trailer to my truck, i needed to install some wires that would connect the tail lights and turn signals from my car to the trailer itself. i figured this could happen when i had my car serviced in santa barbara. apparently, it could not.

they sent me to a place down the street, which could also not. they sent me to u-haul itself, where i purchased the wiring. 60 dollars and an hour to install. the man assured me it was easy and i could probably do it myself. i felt tired of waiting and paying for things that seem extraneous to me. i am independent! i decided i would do it myself.

by do it myself, i actually meant make my brother do it for me. we set out reading about ground wires and light testers and signals. he stripped wires; i taped them. at the end we had at least adhered the wires in some fashion and we felt successful.

the next day i took it back to u-haul to have them tested. they didn't work. not only did they not work, but then my car wouldn't start. they didn't have time to install them correctly that day. after much jumping on my car (literally), i got it to work. (this is a story that's not worth explaining. if you are a mechanic, however, check in with me and i will tell you this weird story and maybe you will solve all my car/ life problems.)

back in sf, i attempted to fix the wires myself, failed,  and then took myself to 3 different auto shops and 2 u-haul centers. this is an abbreviated version of a story that looks like me, ricocheting around san francisco in a frustrated panic, unsuccessfully trying to charm someone into helping me with my apparently ineffective good looks and sparkling personality. either they didn't have time for days or they didn't know how.

i generally decided that life was terrible, no one wanted to help me, and the universe was trying to destroy any fiber of spirit, joy, or love that was left in my body. i was, by no means, feeling dramatic or sorry for myself.

finally i crawled out to the abyss that is bayshore and a man named david said he'd help me, but it would have to be in three hours. in that interim, i drove home, bleached my shower, effectively burned off the top layer of my face with concentrated chemical fumes, and had an emotional breakdown. 

the thing no one tells you about being an adult is that it's HARD. or again, people surely tell you that, but, for all the reasons that are me and my preoccupation with ponies and love and positivity and joy, i sometimes fail to really ingest that information. i was wallowing in the roughness of doing something basically on my own. i didn't care that u-haul guy #2 couldn't fix my truck, but did he have to act like i was assaulting his newborn puppy by asking? i didn't care that garage #3 couldn't take me until saturday, but did they have to be so offended that i suggest they, as an auto shop, do something to alter/ aid my auto? why was everyone so bent on making my worst day the actual worst day alive? why did no one care that this was hard for me and i'm scared and i'm doing a big thing and i really was organized in every other way and i just needed help with this one thing before i get my truck thursday morning? why did everyone hate love and my relationship so much that they wished to make it impossible to happen?

yes. i was spiraling. 

i returned to u-haul at my allotted time. david came to help me. it will be about a half hour, he says. a half hour was actually an hour and, due to lack of any civilization nearby other than freeway, i was held captive in u-haul with its profusion of unhappy people in grinch sweatpants shoveling around what seemed to be enormous bags of empty candy wrappers, while a four note musical riff played on repeat in the background. i thought i would die. i thought my day was the end of days. i thought i had entered actual hell and the address was 1575 bayshore boulevard.

mercifully, david was finally done. he showed me that my lights were at last working. he asked who on earth had installed them in the first place. whoops. so much for being independent.

i asked him where i should pay.

he said, i've got you.

my dear sweet david, what did you say?

i've got you. i just said it was one of our own trucks.

as in, you don't want me to pay you any money?

it's cool.

then i hugged him. i did not ask if i could hug him. he did not mind that i hugged him. i said, i really needed someone to be nice to me right now, so thank you.

i would have paid him seven thousand dollars just to attach the goddam wires correctly. i just wanted it to be done. it wasn't about money. it was about a day that felt gross and unsuccessful and terrible. it was about a day, in which i felt defeated and like people are mean. it was a bad day. it was a stupid day.

sometimes you get to feeling like you're not seen. like you're on your own. like you just want someone to help you, lest you completely fall apart.

dear bayshore david, you saved my day. it's not about money. thank you for making time for me. thank you for knowing how to do something i couldn't quite do. thank you for your gesture, which restored my tuesday's dwindling faith in humanity. thank you for doing something for which you received no actual compensation or reward. thank you for being a human being. thank you for seeing me as a human being. thank you for doing something simple and kind.

thank you for kindness that reminds me to be kind in return.

it is such a good, important, easy reminder. kindness begets kindness begets kindness. i got caught up in the ugliness of everyone else's day. i should remember to be the kindness to start with. and i will. i will remember to start with kindness. thank you, bayshore david, for the reminder.

"who's the boy i love?"

i recently realized i spend a lot of time talking about how sad i am to move. how much i'm leaving behind. how scared i am. how many tears i'm swimming around in.

this is all true.

but i am also THRILLED. because i am going to be with this boy:

this is nic. nic is my boyfriend. nic is the boy i love so much i think my mouth will tear off my face from smiling so big. nic is the boy, who makes me feel funny and smart and naturally beautiful and comfortable and calm.

this photo is from the second day we ever spent together. we ate chinese food and i ordered mu shu pork. when said mu shu pork arrived, i realized that it is essentially a heaping plate of cabbage. aka a pile of shredded sulfur. i looked at him and said something to the effect of this may have been a bad choice. we laughed. (as it turned out, i was right.)

there are many ways to become comfortable fast and, for the simple reason that nic is nic, i was immediately comfortable with him. i basically decided i loved him without ever having met him, set about manifesting my love, tricked him into loving me, and now am rapidly descending upon him in his hometown.

it has also come to my attention that many people don't know how or why i acquired a kentucky boyfriend. for them and for all posterity, i will commit the words to writing here.

about a year and a half ago, my dear friend was dating a boy. that boy went to pilot school with nic. that boy and dear friend said, you should totally meet our friend. i realized a long time ago that, despite people's best intentions, i never want to meet their friends that i should totally meet. they are nice people with whom i am incompatible and then feel awkwardly required to romantically entertain, because i am too nice/ wishy washy/ unassertive to reject them. nic lived in new york at the time, so it was easy to pretend the set up was a good idea without ever having to meet him.

being children of a digital age, at some juncture in our prescribed non-existent courtship, we became friends on facebook. social media affirmed that nic is very attractive, which gave him an edge on all of my other potential suitors. i looked through his pictures and ever so occasionally, he would send me a song and we'd exchange a few words.

some ten months later, it was january 1st of this year. i was a bed ball of pizza/ doughnut/ beer/ love hangover after my best friend's wedding (the nuptials of my actual best friend, not the movie), and i was trolling facebook for the pictures of mistakes other people had made the previous night, when nic sent me a message. i almost came to your city for new years.

apparently he'd tried to get on a standby flight to san francisco to come see our mutual friend. the skies had denied him and he went home.

having nothing better to do, we chatted online for the better part of two or three hours. an actual exchange revealed that nic was funny, smart and a normal human being. someone that i could talk to and understand easily. this becomes increasingly rare as i get older.

this interaction combined with his obvious adorable face led me to start thinking about him more. one night i was out with my friend, val, and found some cursory way to incorporate him into conversation. i had a crush. and, just like any good crushor, i wanted to talk about my crushee as casually and frequently as possible. we came home late from our shenanigans and looked at pictures of his face online. while we were deep in the recesses of his photos, i was gushing over some particular picture. val instructed me to "like" it. i said no, because that would mean he'd know i was stalking him. 

(i sound like a teenager! i am basically a teenager. for the non-facebook inclined, all you need to know is, by marking this photo with my "like," nic would simply know that i was intentionally looking at pictures of him late at night. obvious.)

i did it anyway. 

basically i was insisting that he notice me. and he obliged.

the next morning i had a message from him that said stalker. i laughed. we had witty exchanges.

and then it exploded. we exploded. facebook exhanges turned into texting all day. day texting turned into texting all day every day for two weeks. texting turned into me finally calling him, uninvited, quite late one night. late night phone call turned into more frequent phone calls. phone calls turned into long phone calls.

one day i talked to nic for six hours. it was a sunday and i hadn't eaten or showered or left the house. we ended up on the phone and before i knew what was happening it was dark. it was 10 pm. i still hadn't eaten or showered or left the house. i hadn't moved; my body hadn't asked for anything except to hear him. i wanted to know what this person had to say. i wanted to hear his stories. to agree or disagree with him. to tell him about myself. i wanted to hear his voice. i wanted to wait for his laugh. to incite it myself. i wanted to revel in our similarities. to talk about our differences. i wanted to just keep hearing him. i wanted to know what he thought about everything.

at some point i asked, who do you tell when you're happy?

i wanted to know who that person was. the person he turned to. he responded, no one. and then, my sisters, i guess.

we talked about things people talk about when they want to know each other.

this kind of communication spanned, in all, about a month. i had basically already decided i needed to marry nic. nic, upon later revealings, was not arranging our future together, but sometimes boys take a little longer to figure things out. i pouted about not seeing real life him; he dissuaded my hopes and efforts by noting the sheer number of doors between us, until finally, one day, he conceded and bought a ticket to see me/ mutual friend.

a few days before he came, it was his birthday. he was having a good time at a dinner party, and he texted me to tell me about it.

i'm happy and i'm telling you.

this was more or less the beginning of the end for me. here is a boy, who makes connections. here is a boy, who's willing to open himself up. here's a boy, who wants to tell me when he's happy.

the plan was to stay with mutual friend and visit with me as well.

that did not happen.

i picked nic up from the airport and confirmed that he was the boy i wanted. he dropped his bags, twirled me to take a look at me, and hugged me tight. i was done.  he would not be staying with mutual friend. i would keep him.

a day and a half later, i ate all the cabbage. and about one day after that, i told nic i loved him.

i did not know if he would love me back, but i did know that, even if he didn't, he would still keep my heart safe, talk to me kindly, and not shrivel in fear. i met a man, who could hold up my wild and saturated heart. (it turns out he loved me too. success!)

none of this is typically me. despite being a girl with an exploding heart, i have traditionally being very, very reserved and weird and unwilling when it comes to relationships. though i've wanted for many years to hurtle my heart into loving someone, i never came close to finding a person with whom i could comfortably allow it.

but then i saw that face and suddenly i was the girl, who was rapidly making plans for a future together,and blurting out immediate confessions of love. he stayed for a week and we decided we had no idea how to make it work, but we would be exclusive.

to restrict this story to only half a lifetime instead of an entire one, i will edit out each of the million, endearing, wonderful things he did/ said/ showed me in the course of the ensuing months, but suffice it to say that this was clearly my person. (burlap-wrapped flowers delivered by bike messenger at work? a package with polished red rain boots and his favorite book? all the best words? ALL THE BEST WORDS?) i visited nic in kentucky. he came back and stayed for two months in san francisco. and now i am moving to kentucky.

that's that.

now his face looks like this:

he shaved his beard and finished his potsticker. this will denote the passage of time, which has been filled with my ever-growing love. in the time from that cabbage ingestion to my now imminent departure to louisville, about five months have passed. just five little months.

i know i'm leaving a lot here. i know i am scared shitless. i know i don't have a job or a settled place to live or any idea of what it will be like to live in another state. i know i'll miss my friends and i'll be sad to miss watching all my newest baby people grow day by day. i know it will be an adjustment and it will be hard at times and probably now and again i'll ask myself, what on earth have i done?

but i also positively, totally, certifiably know that there is no way i could not do this. because i want to be with this man. i want to see what unfolds. i want to sit next to him while he studies and i want to clean up his hair and toothpaste from the sink. i want to come home to his face. i want our skin to touch in the night. i want to talk about what we're going to make for dinner. i want to be tired of making dinner and order pizza. i want to go for a run. i want to paint walls and hold hands and worry about money and sweep the floor and get sick and do the laundry. i want it to be tuesday. i want it to be sunday night or wednesday morning. i want it to be any day of the week; i want it to be any old thing that a person would do. i want it to be the most unmiraculous moment in existence and i want to spend it with him. i want to do it with a man named nicholas kaniasty, whom i immediately and voraciously loved.

nic is the boy. he's funny. he laughs at his own jokes, which, to me, makes him even funnier. he holds my hand and plays with my hair. he makes me oatmeal and coffee every morning. he says what he thinks. he thinks about things. he's blunt and he's right and when he's not right, he admits that he's wrong. he's gregarious. he gesticulates. he'll sing a song for any old thing. he makes every baby smile. he loves my mom. he'll draw the most perfect picture for a sick boy that i love. he lets me cry. he calls me silly names and he remembers important things and he uses the best words. he has the most handsome face. he wants big and amazing things. he believes i am also big and amazing things. he sees the very best version of me. he is easy to be with. he'll go for a run and pick out some fruit at farmer's market and share a sandwich in the sun. he leaves flowers in the car. he is the boy. he is my boy.

this is a blog about moving for a boy. this is a blog about the boy that makes me the happiest, wildest, bravest girl on the planet. this is a blog about me being the luckiest girl for finding this boy all the way across the country and getting to choose him. this is a blog about me and the boy.

"oh man. it's real."

those were the words in response to the two word text i sent the boy that said, i'm packed.


yes, finished packing, 2 weeks early. as in, every plate, piece of silverware, sock scrap, pillow, and expired bottle of dayquil that i have deemed still useable has been wrapped, boxed, sealed, and labeled. i am left with access only to my grandmother's pristine cherry red suitcase with its fading gold MSL monogram, which carry the temporary life necessities.

or the things that make me comfortable, rather. (hi bear! we're going on an adventure!)


i was in such a torrent to do it, to begin, that suddenly i was finished and then i stood there and said to myself, what now?

now it's just waiting. now it's real.

i wondered why i began so early. sometimes i worry i'm rushing too much. that i make too many plans, so many plans, that i can't enjoy where i am. i can't unfold in a way that's organic, but rather become this automaton shifting between scheduled social engagements on my google calendar.

i stand in my room that was once so many colorful and silly representations of myself and the things that i love, which is now just piles of boxes with hastily-written labels. i thought about being a kid. i thought about the days i was so panicked about school, so ready to be there in the morning, that i tried to sleep in my clothes. i would put on my outfit-- even then, always a dress-- and slide atop the sheet and blanket and lie overly still beneath that floral comforter, which mirrored my sister's twin one to my left.

i kept my arms tucked under the covers, which, in retrospect, was a dead giveaway. i was never an arms-under-the-comforter kind of girl. it was too hot and restrictive and even then i slept just the same as i live-- wild and hot and never without movement. i have always been an arms-out kind of girl.

and then kate would tell on me. beth is wearing her school clothes.

god it made me mad. it made me fucking furious.  (sorry kate! those are strong words. i love you. i'm not mad at you anymore.) 

i just wanted to be ready for school. i wanted to wake up and leap out of bed and be ready. i wanted to be ready for the next thing. i wanted to not be late. i wanted to be where i was going next.

i have always struggled to find the balance between foresight and preparation, and simply being present in the moment. how do you look where you're going, but also notice where you are? how do you stay aware of what's ahead of you, but also not trip on the thing right beneath you?

where am i now?

this is where i am. i'm on my bed in a room that's filled with things. now they are just things. they are things in boxes with labels. fabric and wood and cardboard and plastic and ink. they are an organized amalgamation of things that are both me and entirely absent of me. any portion of them could not make it to my destination and i would probably never miss them. 

this morning i sat and drank a cup of coffee in the first place the boy and i ever shared a coffee, a piece of toast, and the feeling of first morning together-- of everyday life. i sat even though i'm going to santa barbara today and it's my first instinct to leave as early and hurriedly as possible.

i sat and nothing miraculous or terrible happened. i drank a cup of ethiopian in honor of my love. willie nelson played on the radio. a baby waved at me, while waiting in line, and i told her how wonderful it is to be naturally exuberant without caffeine. i looked at the cars driving down divisadero. i wrote some words on a piece of paper. i was, for one very small moment, amidst all the commotion of this particular time and my life and my person in general, still and alone and not going anywhere. i felt all the feelings whirling around inside me, bouncing off the walls of my skin, threatening to spill out, and i told myself, be calm. be where you are.

a tiny piece of life happened. i waited and i will still get home. the miles will pass between san francisco and santa barbara and my parents will still love me and it will still become friday and i will have what i need and in ten small days, i will still get in the cupcake truck and move to louisville.

my terror has subsided and turned mostly into thrill and exhilaration and impatience. but i will try to take these ten days-- my whole life, rather-- and be always and exactly only where i am. i will think about where i'm going without losing where i am. i will anticipate what's to come without forgetting what is. i will be beth, who is now. beth amongst the boxes. beth in between. beth in love.

"b, you'll be okay, you know? you'll be okay."

sometimes you're two weeks out from moving away from everything you've ever known, your house is in boxes, and you're feeling a little lost, so you put on the periwinkle suede heels your foreverest best friend just gifted you, turn on some music, notice the awareness it takes to stand tall when your balance is off, and tell yourself, i can stand.

even when it's tricky, i can stand.

i will always find my footing again.

"are you scared?"

those are the words a three year old uttered to me today. an intense, emotional, lovely three year old, whom i've known since she was born. if you don't know anything about three year olds, let me tell you this: they don't ask if you're scared. they don't think about how other people operate that way. a three year old is still, developmentally, the center of their own universe and the idea that another human being has emotions and experiences, independent of anything involving them, is hard to access.

but, amidst my casual tales of leaving, not meant to scare, but inform them, she asked.

are you scared?

so i said, confidently, also not to scare them, yes.

i am fucking scared.

today i said my first real goodbye-- my first i will see you again i don't know when-- which looked a lot like talking, laughing, drinking beer, eating various items made of carbohydrates drenched in cheese, and then occasionally holding hands across the table in wistful declarations of bay area love that has spanned more than a decade. it was easy and beautiful and just what i expected and needed.

i felt perfectly composed until 95 seconds before we reached the bart station, where i was depositing her to send her back to her native east bay. at this moment in time, immediately after asserting how i was either so totally cool and composed about moving or so far immersed in disbelief that i was not processing anything, she began crying. and then i, without hesitation or restraint, also began crying, and failed to stop. i failed to stop throughout the subsequent hugging, the ride in a too-hastily-arriving lyft to the tenderloin, the arrival to a cafe/ bar in the tenderloin, or the 10-12 minutes i locked myself in the bathroom of said tenderloin cafe/bar, which smelled aggressively like pee and the floor of which was either covered in excess sink water or the exact pee that was permeating my nose and tear-stained eyeballs.

i failed to stop as i left the cafe/ bar and walked down the hideous streets of the tenderloin, abandoning my cause of meeting other friends and casually pretending i was walking to cool myself down before again entering a lyft, tear-filled and absent of composure, but really walking in the exact direction of my best san francisco friend, who lives two blocks away and with whom i'd be texting the entirety of my rapid and total descent into insanity.

she was, as any good best friend would be, walking up the street to me at the exact time i was so unintentionally approaching her house. she smushed me in her arms, let me cry, patted my back, and invited me up to her house to allow me to further cry in privacy.

we talked some manner of words, which went on for about an hour, and at the end, i felt not terrible.

the truth is, i can collect words to say about this thing or that. i can talk about my nerves about arriving in louisville and what will happen-- how i will occupy my time, how i will afford rent or the $8 cups of individually-brewed african coffee to which i've become accustomed, where specifically i will live, what it will feel like to be without girlfriends in any given moment, how the change in weather will affect my skin, hair, and general demeanor, what a contrast the political climate might be to my accustomed surroundings, how i feel about leaving so many people i've loved so intensely for so long, the pressures that are added to a relationship by making such enormous leaps so early, and blah blah blah blah blah until my mouth literally aches from moving.

but the truth is, the truth is, that i am simply overwhelmed and scared.

i wish that statement not to detract from the concurrent, unmitigated, total, life-shaking, unfathomable thrill i feel at so soon getting to live in the same place as a man i infinity percent love. because i infinity percent love him and, in many senses, cannot wait to bust out of this city and throw myself in his arms and make out in every corner of louisville and see that stupidly perfect face every morning and hold hands on every street and move through the seasons together and laugh and bound and touch and even get sick and frustrated and lose sometimes, but generally disgust every person around me with how emphatically i infinity percent love this man.

i wish it not to detract from that. because that is its own, total, total, total thing.

that is its own whole heart. it takes up its own whole heart. it takes up a heart that's existed for a hundred years.

but then there are all the other feelings. there are all the feelings i mentioned before. the what will happens and the what ifs and the how will it feels and the truth is i just don't know. and i've spent a lot of time knowing. i've spent a really fucking long time with everything mostly planned out and it scares me not to know. plain and simple. and it scares me that i'll be there and i won't be able to casually walk down my friend's street, knowing she'll scoop me up.

again, it's that, but it's not that.

it's just everything. it's nine million infinity percent feelings and they are erupting out of me violently and once they start, they don't stop.

the truth is that the idea of moving has also moved every single feeling that ever existed inside my body and brain and toenails and they are now all so agitated that they are exploding out of me without restraint.

the truth is, if you see me in the next two weeks (or month or months or years or lifetime probably), i will probably cry all over you, and please don't take that to mean anything other than i am a girl, who has soaked up so much of the world around me that some of it is bound to leak out of my eyes now and again, if not every moment that i exist.

and i'm getting to be okay with that. i'm getting to be okay with a lot of things that seem weird, but end up just being life moving through me and what is life if not the living of and expression of it.

so here i am. living at infinity percent.

this is a blog about moving for a boy. this is a blog about living at infinity percent. this is a blog about tearful, bursting, overflowing, hyperbolic, all-the-way me.

"write a blog about moving for a boy"

this was the instruction that was just delivered, by said boy, for whom i am moving.


i am moving for a boy.

this is a blog about him. sort of.

it's about many things, maybe even all the things, but we'll get there eventually. for now i have to start somewhere.

first i thought about what i would keep.

when you're suddenly faced with the idea of literally carrying and then transporting every item you've ever acquired across america, it puts things in perspective. would i take the sparkly polyester dress, arms bleached out with sweat, that i've had since i was fifteen and once wore while singing medleys of show tunes? would i lug the books i've still never read? would i continue on with my mashed-up pillows, my thousand-times-painted thrift store kitchen table that's lived in at least four san francisco apartments? would i take the chipped wooden spoon, stained green from stirring jello and dyeing nylons in the sink for childhood plays, that was once a loster house staple and my mom gifted to me upon acquiring my first apartment? would i pack up millions of strewn about tampons, stretched-out hair ties, half-used chapsticks, malfunctioning pens, and obsessive collection of scrap paper that i'm terrified to recycle for fear that one day i will need exactly that many pieces of already used paper?

how do i decide what's worth it?

and then it expands. the bigness of that question. it bleeds into everything. it extends beyond the oily cookie sheets i always knew i should replace and the pile of letters and cards i've been amassing since humanity learned how to commit ideas to paper. it becomes even more than the question of how and why i've acquired so many partially functioning items i always swear i'll edit.

it becomes about people. it becomes about relationships and jobs and routines and all the seemingly concrete places my heart has settled.

who do i take with me?

when my body and my carefully selected arrangement of thingsthatmadethecut arrive in louisville to embrace the man, who i loved so immediately and emphatically that i'd even consider abandoning my entire repository of scrap paper, who will still be there? what love can be carried and transported across america? who and what am i tethered to?

i bury myself so deep in the minutiae of sorting, so entrenched in the trivialness of choosing or discarding this unmatched sock or that, that i forget to admit the single terrifying and totally amazing answer to all these questions, which is simply: nothing.

i am tethered to nothing. i choose my place and my things and my people. i, most often, choose the same ones every day, generally because i never think to do anything else. i choose them by default. i choose them, because they were chosen before the day before that and the day before that. because the days piled up and i kept choosing the same things, because it was too much energy to consider a new choice.

most of it is good. most of it is so good and beautiful and deep that, many days, i feel my heart will explode with joy. most of what i've amassed-- the friends, the routines, the spaces, the interactions and exchanges and hugs and dynamics and ways of being-- are like clay. substantial, organic, dense, rich. and malleable. beautifully and gratefully, malleable.

i'm learning what the good stuff looks like. how it feels in my hands. it feels like clay. it feels like the stuff that the earth is made of.

but like anything else, with time, there's sediment. waste. things that get caught in the matter and i don't know how to filter them out. opinions about myself, words i use, people i give my heart to that don't hold it carefully, habits, things i wrongly think i require. 

i've stayed in the same place so long that i haven't taken the time to stand up and shake off the sediment.

so it's time.

i'm making a choice. i'm making a choice to leave and many things will come with me and many will not. i'll have a 2001 toyota tacoma, a 4x8 trailer full of the things i will continue to carry, a heart that has expanded to absurd proportions with time, but which is suddenly, carefully editing its contents for safety.

this is a blog about moving for a boy. i'm moving for a boy, because i'm moving for myself. i'm moving because it's time to shake it off. migrate. evolve. filter. unleash. agitate. loosen. 

because i found a boy, who sees me as the very best and most beautiful person and the absence of asking for anything more makes me want to give him positively everything.

this is a blog about moving for a boy. this is a blog about me.