Moving and matter

For the last two weeks I've been packing to move. I'm leaving the last place Kevin and I called home. I'm moving for some very good reasons: I found a nice, far more affordable apartment in a neighborhood I like and I don't need or use all of this space. I need to be more frugal. None of that makes this easy or desired.

Packing has been difficult, as you can imagine. Touching the things his hands touched, removing them from the places he put them, all of that is hard. I'm not going to do anything with the clothes in his closet until I am no longer living in this space; I can't bear to see it empty. It hurts, knowing that the very air I breath in this place has some of his cellular matter in it. The new place will have only mine and that of the people who lived there before. Strangers.

Every bit of this feels like a violation. I am dismantling a life I loved so I can move into something uncertain and murky. I can't bear to throw away anything with his handwriting. I have pictures and mementos of his life long before I was a part of it, before his kids were born, before he was anything like the man he came, but I am saving them. I have a storage unit, full of things I will slowly sort through, as I can bear it. I want to do it with care and attention, so I don't hurt myself or dispose of anything his kids value.

It sucks. I don't want to violate his privacy like this, I don't want to take our life apart like this, but I don't know what else to do. Damn it.

All of this being said, I expect it will eventually be a useful change. I don't want to call it a good change because I don't want this new life; I just don't have a choice in the matter. I'm sure, wherever he is, he's pleased that I'm doing this. He would like the new space, it's his kind of place with high ceilings and big rooms. That's part of why I chose it.

I am planning to include Kevin in my new home. To put some of his things into the space so it isn't just mine, it will remain ours. His matter remains mixed with mine. His heart intermeshed with my heart. All of the things we used to build a home still present. Couch cushions dense with his cells. My life dense with us. It matters, maintaining this connection, and I will move mountains to do so for as long as I need.

(As a footnote, please don't tell me that moving will help me move on. I am moving the physical matter of my life. I will move forward at my own pace and no one else has the right or authority to tell me otherwise. Someone tried to recently. That was a mistake. It is also a whole other blog post.)

(c)2015 Laura S. Packer