2004-04-01

OK, it’s officially two months before I move to England, and I am officially getting the jump on the Mother of All Freak-Outs. Moving is complicated and crazy-making, and I’m genuinely convinced that my head will somehow implode if I have to part with all my books. Also, income tax and health care and bank accounts, oh my! Seriously: holy fucking fuck. Has anyone out there done this before? How did you survive?

It’s kind of like living with a terminal illness, except marginally less depressing. I can’t make any long-term plans, and every time I see something I’d like to buy I have to stop and think, “Why bother? I can’t take it with me.” People in Manchester are going to think Canada is a Third World country, or at least seriously fashion-deprived, as I step off the plane in the bedraggled scraps of clothing I’ve been wearing for over a year and my sad, worn-out, frumpy shoes. My kingdom for new shoes!

I’m whittling my possessions down to nothing, which is sort of cathartic but mostly painful. Is there anything more depressing than throwing out photos? I have millions of utterly useless photos – doubles, and things that seemed “artistic” when I was in high school, and oh my God I never looked like that, kill me; but the act of throwing a photograph, any photograph, in the trash is heavy with melancholy somehow – so long, memories! – and feels like it should be accompanied by a glass of whiskey and a groaning saxophone soundtrack. Neither of those things being forthcoming, I performed my nostalgic purge to an accompaniment of Star Trek reruns, which has twice the pathetic with half the poetry. I’m throwing my life in the trash. It’s not like I was using it, but still, there are things I’m going to miss.