Over It/I'm Over It Again (K. Howe)

I just stole a roll of toilet paper from the coffee shop downstairs.
‘So this is where I'm at’, I think, ‘is it?’

I've just moved to a new apartment. The movers dumped my boxes however they fell, all piled together in a jumble on the bedroom floor. No room for a bed to be put down. No idea where my tooth brush is. None of it feels like it means much right now. In fact I feel like throwing it all away - stuff is heavy.

It gets worse: Stuff is heavy, but relationships seem light. So light I might have forgotten to pack them into this mess. My new roommate, who I have met only twice before today, feels like possibly the closest person to me. Perhaps slightly less close than the old roommates, who I only just met eight months ago, off Craig's List. Is this really where I'm at? My whole adult life of exploring, meeting, relating, sometimes connecting - where are any of those people? What about the good times, the shared jokes, the shared tears and philosophies? Right now, in this new place, all those ties seem no stronger than airy strands of dew long since evaporated by the summer sun. The sunny summer of 2008.
New York City.
The lightness of friends
weighs heavily.

Unplanting my belongings from the shelves and drawers in which they've taken root seems also to uproot my psyche. The routine of a place, the ability to feel my way to the bathroom in the dark or reach for a coffee mug and know where it will be gives me a sense of context and belonging. Shallow perhaps, but comforting.
Standing in a new street now, as movers grunt and struggle ungently with boxes containing that mug and everything else I own - from the van to the curb, up two flights of narrow stairs, to an ungainly pile in the new bedroom - all the roots, and their comfort, have been pulled out. My main arteries, I know, are strong and will be fine. They’ll soon start to feel their way down into this new apartment/ground/place, but for the moment they are lying exposed in a heap, feeling the pain of all the little, furry capillary roots roughly broken away and left behind as they were extracted.

More than anything, I am very aware of it all: I have moved a lot.

I call my parents and appreciate the fact that they are were they should be. My father chats on about mathematics, about a seminar he's teaching.
“People generally over overestimate the importance of small digits.” He tells me.
And that seems like a metaphor for life.
I half-way tune him out as I cut open a few boxes and tentatively search for my toothbrush, but his voice on the other end of the airwaves brings me comfort.