packing it in.

i packed my first box today.

13 actually. 13 paper boxes full of books, dvds, and things that will probably get broken in transit despite their many layered protective newspaper cocoons. theoretically, this should be good news (especially for my breakables). but really, i’ve got 4 days until my movers show up, and i’ve only packed about 1/8 of everything i own. and that was the easy bit. unfortunately, the rest of my apartment is far less square and regular than my book and dvd collections.

and now, here i am, watching netflix and writing instead of playing through the pain and packing up my kitchen implements before i have time to forget that i’m moving and accidentally get them all dirty again.

thing is, i don’t want to move.

bargaining.

so today i googled “7 stages of grief”. what i learned is that there are actually only 5 stages (not one of which is shopping). well, this website says there are 7, but it does so entirely in comic sans- which is in no way a credible way to deal with sadness.

but as i was saying before, i just finished up the shopping portion of my coping process, and am getting ready to start the packing stage. but in between these two critical stages comes BARGAINING. this past weekend, the ex and i spent an entire day walking around the condo staking claim to all of our worldly possessions.

he gets the “dead like me”, i get the “futurama”.

he can have all the bamboo spatulas, but the kitchen scissors are mine.

neither one of us will take ownership of the pink kitchenaid toaster with the broken handle.

it’s weird. now that all the yelling and crying at 4 am watching “sense and sensibility” stuff is over, only the practical sediment remains settled at the bottom. now, we’re both exhausted and forced by time constraints to be all “business time” (not the sexy kind) for a while. i strongly suspect that there will be more late night crying at movies when i’m moved into my new place, and the gravity of this life change smacks me across the face. but for now, everything is oddly calm.

perhaps as a true testament to our lack of compatibility, we split every single thing 50/50 without argument. sure, i was a little misty to see “legend of zelda- twilight princess” disappear in the “HIS” box. and he was equally heartbroken when i reclaimed a number of the entries in his “all paul rudd all the time” dvd collection.  maybe he’s just smug because he gets to keep the tempur-pedic mattress? or maybe he really just does have terrible taste in everything (i did find a copies of “shrek” and “goldmember” that i had hidden deep in a closed cabinet because i was ashamed to let him put them on the shelf- yet somehow i let “k-pax” slip past the goalie).

or maybe, i assert my autonomy too much in relationships to the point where i can pretty much cut and run with all of my stuff at any given moment. this one was a little different. i bought a house (“we can just sell it and split the equity if i change my mind”). i got a dog (“i’ll just steal him in the middle of the night if i have to”). but even that time i got married, i didn’t change my name. i kept my own bank account.

well, this unearths a whole bunch of unfortunate questions about my commitment issues that i don’t feel like dealing with right now. maybe i’ll dive head first into the packing/unpacking stage until i’m ready for the bad internet dates phase. i’m pretty sure that’s where all the good stories are anyway.