“What happened to all your stuff?” my roommate asks after I open my bedroom door.
“Sold,” I reply simply.
Little by little I have been selling off many of the things I own, watching as they slowly dwindle in number. I feel freed, I think. Every now and then, I get the simple urge to rid myself of various things, picturing in my head a reptile shedding its skin and starting anew.
That’s me, I say to myself. That’s what I’m doing now.
I take photos, post ads, open the door when strangers arrive to take away the things I used to live with. My room starts to look more and more empty. The walls return to their bare and natural state. The corners and windows uncovered and naked. The transformation, a stop-motion video.
In three weeks I’ll board a five-hour flight across the country. I’ll have checked in one large suitcase and one smaller suitcase containing clothes and a few keepsake items I’ve refused to let go. I’ll spend five minutes questioning the purpose and actions of my life and four deciding whether or not I should call my parents. I’ll opt not to.
I’ll buy a ginger ale at the airport stand and some pretzels for the flight. I’ll walk through the gate briskly, my boyfriend keeping pace behind me. In our seats, he’ll look at me, raising his eyebrows as he reaches his hand out for mine, wiggling his fingers until I stop rolling my eyes and smile.
You know, it’s just that right now, at this moment, this thing feels right. Everything feels right.
I crawl into bed without changing. I’m too tired and sick and achy and miserable to be bothered to do much else.
“I have food poisoning,” I whimper to the empty half of the mattress next to me.
My body’s never been one with a high tolerance for suffering; my physiological reactions are simply too strong to let things go, and I’ve the acute disadvantage of enduring their results.
When I was little, I’d constantly forget to eat. I’d run around for hours, exhausting my energy supply, until the minute my hunger pains struck. Like a paper house of cards, I’d collapse wherever I was, hands on my stomach and a whimper creeping out the sides of my mouth.
My mother had seen it so many times she was no longer amused.
“Get up,” she’d command. “That means your hungry.” Later in life, I learned how not to let it get this far, though I still wouldn’t consider myself finely in tune with what my body tries to tell me.
I remember last year, I thought I felt calm as I defended myself when my uncle told me my life in its current stages was not worth living. It wasn’t until I reached over to pick up the chopsticks I had put down that I noticed I was visibly shaking. After a bite of food, I realized I had no appetite.
This week, I rode the waves of nausea and stomach pains for hours before finally forcing myself out of denial and into the bathroom to vomit. I was hoping I didn’t really have food poisoning.
I suppose I’ll always think I can endure more than I can endure.
I remember the first Santogold concert I attended back in 2008 when she was really starting to blow up. I dragged a friend out with me, before he became my man, and made him buy my drinks.
At the venue, we ran into an old high school acquaintance of mine.
“Are you two together?” was one of the first questions.
Looking back, you now realize you spent the first year of it dreaming and the second year living. Your hair was red, then brown, then yellow, then pink. You changed it around to figure yourself out. Then you changed yourself to figure him out.
After a year, the people in your life started to fade like old photographs. He had moved away by then, and took your focus with him. Now you had to go too.
And who could blame you? This is it, you thought to yourself then. This is why.
You packed your car and said goodbyes. This is so much love, you swelled.
…
Years later, a different boy in your bed, you casually mention the days you lived in the desert.
I was digging through an old spiral notebook today, searching for unused lined paper, when I found a sheet on which I had tracked personal going-on’s for past birthdays in a manner similar only to archaic library catalogues. Handwritten. Yellowed paper. Saved as reference.
20 was spent lounging, daiquiri in hand, by a pool off the coast of Mexico.
21, drunk in Las Vegas, encouraging strange men to buy me drinks and forcing my sister to be my designated driver.
22, at my parents’ house in Tustin, abnormally thin and suffering from a broken heart.
23, indoors during a rainy Taiwan spring, receiving the largest bouquet of flowers I’ve ever gotten.
24, revelling in the most beautiful part of China, letting everyone think my friend was my husband just because we shared hotel rooms.
25, in someone’s bathroom in Manhattan, sobbing because my grandfather had just gotten diagnosed with terminal cancer.
26, training in San Francisco for the half-marathon race that I completed 2 weeks later.
27? My god, that’s coming up fast.
I wonder if 27 should be the year I find myself in an authentic, loving relationship. Fully recovered from what I was almost led to believe would be an insurmountable heartache at 22, I speak with more reservation, I write with less conviction, and I run when I should stay.
And damn if I’m not ready for something else.
In a few months, maybe I’ll find myself engaging in romantic relationships where longevity is an actual possibility. Or maybe I’ll just keep dating the hell out of this city until it cries uncle and refuses to see me. I mean, I need something with which to occupy my time (lord knows I can’t find a job to save my life).
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