3.23.02 – the last night in buffalo

the last night in buffalo. haven’t been posting because i can’t seem to access the blogger page via my isp and haven’t had time to really wonder why that is. tonight i’m just posting brute-force style, by editing the index page that blogger usually writes for me and ftping it back to my server. not that you should be terribly interested in the mechanics of how i post to slithy tove. haven’t had much to write, anyway. my life has been filled with the mundane details of packing, saying goodbye, returning borrowed items, finding new homes for the stuff that won’t fit into my car. zeke is openly traumatized by all the change and movement; he spent large parts of the day hiding underneath the papisans. inwardly i feel equally traumatized; if i had the option of hiding under the furniture until this is all over i probably would do so as well. i can’t figure out why moving is so psychologically difficult. i mean, i put all my stuff in boxes, mail them off to my next home, clean the apartment, put zeke in the car and we go. this time i’m even headed back to my hometown for the summer, so it’s not like i’m headed out into the great unknown or something. but something about the process just makes me tense and anxious on a very subconscious level. somewhere during college i adopted a rather unhealthy coping strategy in which i’m not longer aware on an intellectual level that i’m experiencing stress, but rather i internalize it, express it through my body, and only realized that i must be stressed out when my stomach starts acting up or my shoulders begin to ache from being held hunched so high. i don’t think this can possibly be good for me, but i’m not sure that there’s a way back.

is this wanderlust a part of some self-defeatist attitude? i know that i crave stability and a sense of belonging, yet i continue to place myself outside of those comfortable boundaries, in the hopes of, what? finding something, i guess, although i’m not quite sure what that something is supposed to be yet. maybe i’ll just learn to settle down eventually. maybe this is a massive the-grass-is-always-greener lesson that i have to learn. but maybe there’s something else waiting out there for me to find it, and that’s why my furniture’s been given away, clothing packed, and tomorrow i’ll hop in my car and set out for idaho.

hannah and i took a late-night walk to walgreen’s to get her some trashy magazines to read on the plane tomorrow. the cold air cleared my head, tums calmed my stomach, and besides, it gave us a final chance to shoot dirty looks at the security guard who hassles everyone late at night. i’m really going to miss having hannah as my roommate. i’ve had wonderful roommate karma. in college, while everyone else was seeking the highly-coveted senior single, lmo and val and i were trying to snag the only triple in the french house because we genuinely valued each other’s company over our own need for personal space.

a while back, musing on the topic of moving and new places, i wrote that theatre seemed to be the constant in my life, and that everything else was transitory. i kind of had my head up my ass while i was writing that (but then, what’s new?), getting all intellectual and thinking about the parallels between a transitory art form and a transitory lifestyle devoted to said art form. my life is full of constants that i take for granted – some good, some bad. it’s a constant that zeke will be waiting for me at the door when i come home, which ever door that is. it’s a constant that i get anxiety attacks the week before i move to a new place. i will always stay up late, regardless of what i say about going to bed early. movie theatre popcorn sounds like a good idea before you eat it, not after. white russians taste good, martinis taste bad. exercise always makes me saner. sleeping alone isn’t much fun, but you get better rest that way. but most importantly, there are incredible, special people in my life and they are not transitory. our relationships are always changing, because we ourselves are not constants, but i am incredibly blessed that they are in my life, and they are not expendable.