"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.