Compartments and boxes

I went to look for boxes. Everyone has more or less failed me, friends, even boyfriend of sister, all told me they would get me boxes but in the end they couldn't find any.

So like most things in life, I had to do it myself!

I went to one place I knew I could get in and knew where the boxes where: the Medical School. I spent five years working there, or nearby. I knew the labs. It was where I started my English Conversation, an eight-year commitment that outlasted tango, though that commitment ended when I started the new job. I didn't make friends there, except my best friend. Yes, that Spanish girl who walked in with those big brown eyes and I was enchanted.

I was aware that I was roaming right below the corridor where her lab used to be. How many times I had waited for her, patiently. How many nights. As I have mentioned in one of the entries, there were plenty of drama between us, expectedly, but still, there was even more love. We had many fights where we didn't talk to each other for weeks (more like she didn't want to talk to me for weeks). Then we always found the walls really thin after a short period of time and we broke them down with big smiles. We were both very proud people, refusing to budge. But we really loved each other. She isn't around anymore. She has a loving boyfriend. We don't talk for more than once a month. But she's still my best friend. And being there, in those sad-looking halls of the competitive laboratories, the smell, the sight, the way the staircases were designed, so many memories.

Why can't I just write books with those memories instead of letting them make me so sentimental?

I found boxes, a lot, enough for tomorrow's move.

But I still hated being in the med school. I always get sad. I don't know why. I really don't.

I stopped by the architecture school because that was where my art buddy said I could find lots of boxes. I had enough boxes already, but I was greedy. I had never been to the new architecture school before. It's beautiful, really. Why do I still discover new gems in this little town that has apparently taken up so much of my life? I didn't find boxes, but I found this gem. The discovery made me sad too, but in a different way from how the medical school made me sad.

I thought about my excessive complaints about being alone, having to do things alone. I think those who hear them must think I am a weakling, but then they don't really know me. I don't know many men who have done and overcome what I have done. I am sure there are plenty of men out there who have done far more, but either I am surrounded by sissy men or I am not as weak as my complaints suggest. I like to complain with people I trust. I actually don't complain much unless I have decided that such person was within my circle of trust. I believe in a form of complaining. You gotta complain to someone if you need to complain. Not like you can complain to a mirror and expect the same results.

I went to the gym after the scavenge hunt for boxes. Would this be my last gym visit here? I don't know. I think I got tired of noting everything "last time." I am still not excited about going to NYC. Partly because I know I will once I get there. Partly because it is my home, and I am more emotional than excited to be going back "home" for this boy with nearly no roots. Partly because it's difficult to leave here, more than I thought. It's difficult because of the mountain full of memories. It's difficult because my heart is heavy with the lead of the recent separation from someone I really care about, even love. I am less afraid of the future (quite welcome it) than sad about the present. I don't know what a non-sad departure looks like. To have a girlfriend? So I can come back every now and then? Not sure if that makes a big difference. One woman can't be expected to buttress the cathedral of my memories, each stone cut with so much joy and sorrow.

Now I have boxes. I get to decide what to put where, the compartments of my life, filled with different facets, different interests. I have two shoe boxes of letters from friends. I don't get many letters, actually, not anymore. Before the internet became a social tool, I got a lot of letters. Now I write a lot of letters to those who never write me letters, but I guess they don't know how to use the pen anymore, not only to write, but to express themselves. I am still a traditionalist; I write. I write so that the reader takes the time to think about what I write and give in to the urge to respond as text messages and emails allow. Those two shoeboxes are memories too. I also have a bunch of letters I wrote but never sent out. They are almost all angry letters. Letters I wanted to send. Most of them even have stamps on them, waiting to be sent out. But in the end, after I have vented, I decided to keep the letters.

There are lots of things to pack up. Some will go to my apartment half the size of where I live now. Many will go to story, in the basement or my parents, or just get sold, thrown away.

I am accompanied by friends on this move, both friends from here, friends in New York, and friends and family elsewhere. But I wonder, I can't help wondering, what it's like starting this move with someone I love sitting in the car with me. I don't mean a close friend of mine who will be coming with me, a generous act that I will forever be indebted to her, and so I am not being ungrateful. I just wonder what it really is like if my fantasy came true, that the girl I love loves me back enough to go down with me, be the first to see what my new life looks like.

That won't happen. Not this time. But I still wonder. It would be an interesting piece of memory for the future.