Today I started a project I’ve been putting off for years.

5 years ago I made an impulsive and stupid move from Dallas to the DC suburbs.  I had no job, little savings, and no idea what I was going to do.  I was burnt out from grad school and slunk off without finishing my degree.  I was lost, and in loneliness a place that I had loved had turned sour.  With little planning and less good sense I mailed all my crap from the Central to the Eastern time zone.

Things didn’t work out.  After 10 months I had no job and an entrenched drinking habit.  I had to move back home to Portland. Once again I packed my life into boxes and made a tidy profit for UPS.  The drinking came too, but that was a carry-on.  Aside from a 3 month illness, life was pretty much the same in Portland as it had been in Aspen Hill: lots of drinking, no job.  Aside from books, movies and some kitchen supplies, the boxes stayed closed and shoved into the back of the attic.

After another 10 months in Portland a friend finagled me a job interview in Maryland.  With two suitcases and slim hope I flew across the country again.  By a miracle I got the job.  The boxes stayed (for the most part) in Portland.  DVDs got shipped about a year and half later, but my family packed up my books and added them to the pile in the back of the attic.

Every time I’ve been home since my mom and I have talked about me “going through my things.”  I’ve never followed up.  Either I didn’t have time, or it was the holidays, or a wedding, or well, you get the idea.  When I was drinking the accumulation of my possessions couldn’t have mattered less to me.  When I became sober, I was just too afraid.

Afraid because I didn’t know what I would find.  Would I find junk that would shame me when I thought of how much money had been wasted shipping it all over creation?  Would I find evidence of a happier person who I failed miserably?  Would I find the trail of breadcrumbs that would finally tell me how things went so wrong?

I found broken glass and pottery from pictures and salt shakers that I hadn’t packed properly in my drunkenness and haste.  I found photographs and notes from my semester in Rome.  I found teapots that I’d been given as gifts from people I still keep in contact with.  I found nail polish.  I found the framed picture of my father that I’d always always kept in my bedroom.  I found the program from my friend Kevin’s funeral mass.  I found trinkets from weddings.  I found a letter Calah wrote to me the night before her wedding, and I started crying.  I found board games and coffee mugs and old T-shirts.

I found a girl I don’t really remember anymore.

She looks just like me.  On the outside I haven’t changed much in the last 10 years.  She didn’t smile very much.  Even when she should have.  She held on to every scrap as if loosing an insignificant detail would destroy the whole memory.  She was jealous of the happiness that seemed so easy for other people, but utterly unwilling to accept any help to alleviate her own misery.  But what I see about her most in those boxes is that she was very very young. 

Throughout my life I have periodically shed places and possessions and people like a snake wriggling out of its winter skin.  I refuse to make commitments, to stay in one place, to form attachment to the world around me.  A few weeks ago I was talking to Kate about why I was so ambivalent towards dating.  I said that since I knew I didn’t want to stay in the DC area it didn’t seem fair to start dating someone.  In my mind, despite the lease I have and the job I love, I was already moving on.  Kate called bullshit, as she was right to do.  I just don’t want to admit how absurd it is for me to think that it’s impossible I might care for someone enough to deal with living in a climate I find so disagreeable.  I don’t want to admit that I might be unwilling to give another person what would be required of me to love them the way they deserve.  I don’t want to admit that while I might have very little in common with the girl from 5 years ago, I might still be someone who leaves her life at a moment’s notice.

I don’t want to admit that I might have changed, but I might not have grown.

Now my mom’s living room and dining room are covered in open boxes.  There is a pile of things for the GoodWill.  A pile of trash.  And I pile of things I would like to keep, that slowly will be mailed from Portland to Maryland.  The last pile is mostly books.  And teapots.  The boxes are all open and there is nothing to be afraid of.  My past cannot accuse me of crimes yet committed.  I cannot go back and give that girl the life she thought she was going to have.  But neither can I throw her out as if she didn’t matter, as if her hopes will remain forever unfulfilled because of mistakes and hardships.

It’s time to put my life in one place, and see what comes of it.

(1 Year, 10 Months and 23 Days Sober)