Place to Place
(Or, “Girl Does Not Know How to Face the Fact That Everything is Changing”)
I’m moving out of my childhood home in a little under two weeks. My life does not look like I thought it would merely a year ago— instead of entering a creative writing MFA program, I’ll be entering my first year of teaching; instead of living in Maryland, I’ll be living in the Bronx; instead of sleeping alone in a twin-sized bed, I’ll be sleeping beside my partner in a full-sized bed.
The changes aren’t unwelcomed. I’m excited to step out of my comfort zone and into this new version of adulthood I’ve never granted myself the privilege to experience before. I’ll miss my mother dearly, and I’ll have to remind myself to call my sister at least once a week. At this very moment, I’m gearing up to buy New Adult Clothes to add to my Newly Established Professional Wardrobe.
I told my therapist I hated change, but she told me I only hated the concept of it: the unpacked boxes, and the unspoken goodbyes, and the thin lines drawn in the sand of a beach set on an entirely different coastline.
“I’m scared of forgetting,” I told her. “What if this is the last time I’ll ever live in the same house as my sister? What if I forget how good it feels to be seen by someone who shares my eyes?”
She shares my eyes and my nose. My mother shares my freckles and my hair. My father, unfortunately, shares my entire face. I found an old photograph of him from when he was sixteen and the resemblance between us nearly sent me into a fit of hysteria.
My friends share my past. We drive across town and pass the graveyard we stood sobbing in just four years ago. Now, we offer each other half smiles. We turn the radio up louder. We ignore the voice calling for us to stop, slow down, remember. Through loss, we’ve all grown bigger. Some of us are teachers; some are parents; some are nurses; some are cashiers; some are engaged.
One of my oldest friends called me a few months ago to tell me she’s getting married to her partner. I haven’t seen her in years— she moved to live with him in Maine, and the distance between us widened. But the sweet sound of her voice brought me back to the fourteen-year-old version of myself who once sat beside her and recited my first lines of poetry. Without her, I don’t know if I’d have been brave enough to write any words at all.
Among the good things I’ll be leaving behind, the bad places stew in the background: the hospitals, the homes, my grandfather’s apartment. I’ll be happy to wash my hands clean and start anew, except I’m not entirely sure if new really exists. Changed, yes. Transformed, maybe. But new? I live in the same body and carry the same memories. I’ve learned to deal with them better, but no part of myself has separated from another.
All of this is to say that change frightens me as much as it exhilarates me. My peers have all tumbled down the path of growing up and growing out. Last night, I asked my girlfriend if she felt like an adult yet. She’s a year and a half older, which isn’t much, but sometimes, the gap feels wider than it is.
“Kinda?” she’d said. “Sometimes I do. Other times, not really.”
I wished I could have dropped to my knees and begged her to tell me when the shift will hit— when I’d feel strong enough to face adulthood with my chest, when past wounds would start to hurt less, when I’d stop missing my best friend from elementary school.
But how could she know? How could anyone know? We’ve only all stepped into our bodies with no guidance to use them but a heartbeat. Time gives us wrinkles and bad backs, and taxes and funerals and marriage and divorce. My mother knows years better than I do, but she has not learned how to do anything else but survive them.
As I fold my New Adult clothes and pack them into my suitcase, I stare at the books lined up on my shelf. I read their titles. I pick up my stuffed animals and lift them to my nose. They smell of nothing but mothballs. I’m not sure why I expected to inhale anything else as they, too, are merely agents of time.
Still, I place them beside the rest of my things. Maybe they’ll sit on the living room couch, just so I can keep smelling them and know something is still the same.