Does anyone enjoy the moving process? Being confronted with all your shit: boxing it up, exhausted and confused with all the decision making and the realization—again—that you have a ton of things? You start out super organized putting like-items in a box, using a thick black Sharpie and your best handwriting to label it. But by the end, you’re so done you just box up the random stragglers, the items you forgot in drawers; you heap together the things that were missed the first and second go round. You don’t even bother labeling those boxes.
Does anyone enjoy being sick? Laying around feeling like shit, listless, lethargic, and getting stressed out because you know your workload is accumulating and there’s nothing you can do about it?
I had the pleasure of experiencing both at the same time. I sold my house and had two weeks to move, and a few days later I tested positive for Covid-19.
My Covid symptoms were:
- A low-grade fever that lasted 12 days
- Complete physical exhaustion
- A mental fog
- Loss of olfactory sense
- Twitches in the meaty part at the base of my left thumb; the part of the hand that the thumb grows out of (don’t know if this was a Covid thing or something else. It was odd though, and stopped when I got better.)
My moving symptoms were:
- A garage full of things to donate
- A huge floor to ceiling bookshelf full of books
- Closets full of clothes, cupboards stacked with plates, Tupperware, food, et al.
- A stack of empty collapsed boxes waiting to fulfill their purpose
- Surprise items I’d expertly stored and forgot about
- Overwhelm
I lay around. “Stay still,” my realtor texted when I updated her letting her know I hadn’t budged since my last text, sent a week ago. Yes, I thought, stay still. Something I could do.
Even though I wasn’t in any real physical pain and could still breathe normally and didn’t have a cough, I wasn’t getting better. I wasn’t getting worse. Nothing was getting done because even the simple prospect of putting together a box and reinforcing its bottom with tape was too much. I physically and mentally couldn’t handle it.
Chad had given me Covid, and was a few days ahead of me on that journey. His didn’t linger as long as mine. When he felt better, he took action. He started in the garage with a lot of clinking and clanking. He took frequent breaks of course to make me sourdough toast with butter, or get me McDonald’s fries. Or unenthusiastically (and dare I say, coldly) bear witness as I whined.
My realtor (my hero!) was able to get us a couple extra days. When I finally started to feel better, I succeeded in putting together a box. I slowly filled it. I put donation piles together. I repeated the process. As I sealed box after box, I realized that the house had a lot of excellent storage space.
One box at a time, one item at a time, we got it done. Movers would have been nice, but I knew that we’d be purging items as we packed, so it made more sense to do it ourselves. Confront everything we’d accumulated, once again. Deal with our own mess rather than hiring someone else to. The best way to get rid of overwhelm is to start, and together we disassembled what we had built.
When we were finally ready to go I let Elvis out back to pee, and gazed up at the pine trees. These towering giants that surrounded the house. I listened to the bird sounds, the particular sounds made by those that live at this elevation and above. Tears started to fall and I went inside, thanking the house for being a constant. Something steady in my life I loved and appreciated through 8 years of growth and change. Chad held me in his arms as I cried. It started to rain, and I removed the key from my key ring and slipped it under the matt.
For a final time, I surveyed the home. I looked toward the back of the property, and spotted two deer watching us as we loaded Elvis into the backseat and slowly drove off, towing our new home behind us.
TRAVEL & ADVENTURE 