“I have too much shit! When did all this shit get here?” I cry out amidst organizing, sorting, packing, reminiscing, and rediscovering every item I own with the intention of traversing West Philadelphia with aforementioned shit to the home I will soon share with my partner for many years to come.
There are many small, panic-y moments I experience while trying to "muse" about the experience of moving due to the density of what moving entails (re: All my shit!), which non-exhaustingly includes:
- Enough mugs to make Home Goods jealous
- A dresser I’ve owned and used since the time I started forming memories
- A different, longer, heavier dresser I bought out of a lack-of-closet necessity, containing…
- All the clothes I had previously stuffed inside both dressers, now hanging in more closet space I could ask for, thankful to finally breathe
In this blog post — which is hopefully first of many to come, should my New House Resolutions stick — I want to look beyond the shit. Moving is such a quizzical action in which one is forced to visibly identify, physically handle, and emotionally commit to the continued existence of said shit in one’s life, and I think that’s crazy bonkers. Being an adult in America in 2024 means I either accept the responsibility of examining my relationship with consumerism, or willfully diluting myself back into the ignorance and ease of Convenience Culture. I write those two capitalized words all Proper Noun fashion because I don’t want to come off like I’m bashing the concept of convenience. Controversial take: I like things that are convenient — again, crazy bonkers. But when I say “convenience,” I mean a home I can afford. A home that has fewer stairs because my partner has angry joints and I find we’re both happier when they’re less in pain. I want the convenience of living in a new home that’s still within the neighborhood I’ve gotten to know for the past year, one close to buses and trains to take me on my adventures, gigs, and duties. “Convenience Culture” is a bigger, more specific kind of beast, so I think I’ll save the anti-consumerist diatribe for another post. Now, back to my shit!
In the act of seeing, touching, evaluating, packing, unpacking, and housing all my shit has made me think “Even my shit has shit.” This thought lessens the panic, replacing it with things I haven’t noticed for years. Take my two (2) binders of Pokemon cards. A person of relative normalcy would think “Two binders filled with little rectangular pieces of neon-colored cardboard?” To which I would respond, “They’re not actually filled yet because I sorted my card collection into two eras: Cards that are new/more modern and make for a cool collection, and then there are super old and sentimental cards I’ve had my entire life — also there’s extra space in the back of that binder for my Yu-Gi-Oh cards, so now don’t YOU sound like the silly one here!” My card-sorting aside, anyone with a card collection of any kind can understand how “this shit has shit.” It’s not just neon-colored pieces of cardboard — this a collection of meaningful interest and passion I share with my partner and closest friends. This heavy plastic binder contains every day my boyfriend decided to surprise me with a little pack of cards to open together when he knows I’ve had a tough day. This binder contains every excited smile my boyfriend gives me when he gets a Snorlax card, and every kiss on the cheek and “I love you” when we put our new treasures away in a binder/tin/random box we have because dear Christ we have so many.
But the binders don’t stop there, remember! Hop over to Binder #2 and you’ll see every card that has retained little to no financial value, but makes up for in legacy. These are the little slips of cardboard that my older brother and I would create our own game and rules to play with, despite the fact Pokemon TCG is so ridiculously easy to play because of the whole “being a children’s IP” thing. At my 26 years of age, I can flip through these binders like photo albums. Pick a card, any card! and I know if it was originally a card I owned, or one I stole it from my brother. I can tell you which cards have stood the test of time and why, and I end up seeing who I was and who I become not because I purchased these things, which ones are rare or valuable, or by the quantity I own, none of that. All I see is either who I was then or who I am now. The latter of those two ends up becoming synonymous with the first one as time inevitably keeps…cycling? Wobbling? Time is very much not linear, so I dislike using such phrases like “moves on/forward” or “passes.” Either way, moving is a process that forces me to confront who I was then and who I am now through all the shit I have to pack and move and have I told you how much shit I have? It is SO MUCH—
As happy and nostalgic as I am to see my treasures that, while coming from the act of consumerism, were/are intentional and within reason of my means, I’m also confronted with the not-quite-treasures. Dare I say, my shit (derogatory) and not my shit (compliment). These items are what define the difference between “my possessions” and “this I just a thing I bought.” As anyone who has a body and wears clothing can attest, clothing is quite the culprit in this case. Due to my limited closet spaces throughout college, my first bedroom in Philly, etc etc., I’ve always detested clothing in excess. However! Simply the thought of disliking clothing in excess did not prevent me from being guilty of this behavior. Yes, Philly Aids Thrift is receiving at least a third of my wardrobe in the coming weeks. Yes, I see pieces of my clothing with the tag “SHEIN” and I have to swallow my vomit — not because of “cheapness” or whatever, but because of the outsourcing of slave labor to create consumer goods and how that I’ve learned about the sheer volume and damage of this practice, I’m forced to either do something about it within my means or just keep doing it. Oh America, so free and patriotic that we stopped using slave labor here to just do it somewhere else now!……..while still also still very much doing it here, as well! We never stopped! Rock flag ’n eagle, baby!
So as much as I live in a society like the rest of us, one where I’m forced to “earn money” and “buy shit” from time to time, clothing can be a great reminder of why and how to make these changes, which are often practical: buying everything either secondhand or “shopping small” as Philly storeowners have informed me. But just as my Pokemon cards, my mugs, my knickknacks etc. have emotional resonance, I’ve found the need and reward of doing the same with my clothes. This blog post is already quite lengthy, much like every pair of pants I own, so I’ll save my wardrobe waxing for another-another blog. The point of all this is: I have a lot of shit, yes. But why? And going beyond my shit, the way I’ve lived with others shows itself in the way I live now. The spirit of my father moves through my arms every time I toss my keys onto the top of my new fridge — all that’s missing is a half-eaten bag of Twizzlers up there next to a “tool” box filled with batteries, loose screws and washers, a tiny lightbulb, and a screwdriver, and that’s it. Little ‘isms here, little movements there, was that me? Was it me from ten years ago? Was it my mom, my siblings, my partner, or something entirely new? I don’t always know, but I’m learning not to fight the things that make my life better. Not always easier, or faster, or more convenient, but “better.”
This notion of “better” brings me to the last thought I wanted to verbally pull apart: just how different this move feels to every one that came before. Every time I’ve moved, it has been in a duality of something terrifying countered with something immensely rewarding, with the latter always being the trumper of the former. I first moved when I was ten from a home across the street from the Catholic grade school and church I attended for my entire youth and adolescence to a home in the middle of nowhere, where our neighbors across the road were farmers and the neighbors next door was a cow pasture of the farm across the road. The effects of this move didn’t fully hit until high school a couple years later when I decided to transfer. Entering high school somewhere entirely new where I knew three people adjacently beforehand was the terror, countered with the reality that I was finally away from the students and faculty of my old school that had misunderstood, isolated, and verbally berated me for a decade. After high school, the dread and panic of moving away from home for the first time caused me to call one of my closest friends in a tearful ramble about how much I didn’t want to go and for things to change. But then at college, the freedom and independence was something I acclimated to much more quickly than I could have ever expected myself to. Of course, the college playthrough I went through got The Bad Ending (COVID), so the terror of moving to the east coast for grad school was folded over in on itself and dumped into a volcano — and all over grad school of all things, dear God this is all so deeply unserious. Anyway, that terror was countered by the new chapter of life I knew I needed to start, for better or worse. Truly, life after undergrad can be summed up as “for better or worse.” But because of grad school, I got to learn from/with amazing people to better the practice of my musical craft, lyrical craft, wordical craft, other good yes awesome super baller good things I write words good thank u NwhyU tish.
Come August of 2023, there’s Philly — and a certain life I never knew I wanted to live and who to live it with. While the sadness of being further from both my biological and chosen families was enormous, this move had an air of inevitability to it. I remember sitting in a bar in Morristown with one of the most important people in my life, explaining all my life circumstances and desires and expectations and fears and everything else…and just lading all of it on “…damn, I’m moving to Philly, huh?” To which my best friend needed only to nod and say “Yeah, bud. You are.” Just over one year after said move, here I am now. I’m sat upon a bed in an apartment with no WiFi (at the time of writing this blog post), no couch or chairs, no trash can or silverware, just little things coming together here and there, and I’ve never felt more…fine. In the truest, most dictionary-accurate inflection of the word: fine. Suddenly gone was the dichotomy of a big scary move countered with a huge rewarding prize at the end. Obviously: this is in no way, shape or form, EVER trying to say living with the love of my life isn’t the best prize I could have asked for. What I am saying is that it doesn’t need to feel like a prize because there’s nothing scaring me this time. I didn’t need to call anyone in a sobbing panic, I didn’t have to move a thousand miles away in a pandemic, none of that. All I had to do was look at the life I’m living now and the one I want to form it into, and part of that was looking at my partner and saying “I love you. This is the life I want to live, and we can do it together.” And that’s it, that’s all she wrote. This move has felt so natural and so cooperative, even in the moments our bodies are doubled-over and aching, carrying (deep breath) ALL OF OUR SHIT (exhale) up and down several flights of stairs a dozen times over. I’m glad this is the choice I have the privilege to make and ability to make real for ourselves, and I’m glad I get to do it with you.
Sincerely,
Beatrice
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