detox

And so the transition begins.

I started packing up Apartment 6 last week, putting it off because I knew what this move would mean.  I knew the kind of dust and fear and regret it would drudge up.  Somehow I had packed so much in that tiny space.

I was right.

We packed everything up and drove it to the house I grew up in.  Driving a silver van just like the one I wrecked seven years ago.  And I came back to clean...

It felt awfully like cleaning up after a crime scene.  Like I had trespassed onto some hallowed ground, a corpse that no longer looked like the living thing it once had been.

So I quit.  I had some pretty grand delusions of getting all of my deposit back.  Of cleaning until that place sparkled.

But my feet kept getting dirty.  And every time I wiped down the counters, dust would reappear.

Suddenly, I was done.  I didn't want any more of this dirt on me.  This was, after all, part of the reason I was moving.  To up and leave this small space and everything it represented.

Last night was not supposed to be hard.  But it was.  In ways I hadn't even anticipated.  As I wiped the dust off the walls where the clock used to hang, threw away the trash, took down the curtains... the bittersweet pain of leaving somewhere, having no where new to go was smothering.

It is, perhaps, a little like a quarantine.  My belongings, my things, did not get moved from one place to the a new place.  They got packed up.  Organized.  Sorted.  Stuff was thrown away.  Stuff was wrapped up.  Stuff was labeled.  And it was taken to a neutral place.  A place which meant no harm, no hurt.  Just a saving place.  A holding place.  As if my things need about three weeks to breathe... let air out the past year before they get taken into a new space.

A brand new space -- meant for families and lives well lived.

In the process, I wore myself out.  Emotionally I think I was fighting a battle, spiritually I was winning it too... if only because of how long ago I learned that it was not my battle to fight.  I woke up this morning in an old friends house... afraid to move.  Because as soon as you move, life begins again.  Rapid.

I have no ill feelings toward the tiny space on Woodland Avenue.  It served it's purpose of giving me my independence and a place to sleep at night.  There was more privacy there than I needed.  The ability of those four walls to keep secrets was unmatched.

Even now I look back at this writing space, at the first blog I wrote on August 1st 2011 http://annaevaughan.blogspot.com/2011/08/one-question.html.  It is such a brutal indicator of what the year would hold.  I can barely read it without cringing... without wondering how I didn't see it all coming.

So I am going to detox.  I am going to throw lots of shit away.  And this next season is going to be, not only a new one, but a good one.  A season following brokenness, it is going to be a season of rebuilding.

But I'm still brushing off the dust from apartment 6.