I find myself looking around my apartment and going "Yeah, I’m done with this place."

Not that the packing and moving is done–it is to laugh!–but with a couple of bookcases, most of the books, and some of the art gone, I am definitely not comfortable here any more. Being here alone, even working, is depressing me.

I suspect part of it is that the last few moves I’ve made have been INCREDIBLY depressing–of the duct-tape-and-sobbing variety–so it’s a bit Pavlovian–perhaps my brain now equates moving with despair. But moving into this place was good for me. I threw myself into it like a psychotic, trying to make a place that reflected ME, as part of that whole identity-nesting thing that you always go through after a divorce. You’re not entirely sure who you’re going to be, so "I am the person who lives HERE," is a pretty good starting point.

Maybe that’s the problem–having so vigorously created an environment to reflect my personality, its dismantling feels rather personally unsettling. Even with barong still conspicuously placed everywhere, even with Ganesh’s shrine on the countertop and my computer where it always is, and Ben giving me the I-want-to-jump-in-your-lap look from the floor…yeah. It doesn’t feel like home anymore.

This place was a blank canvas a year ago, and it was good for me, it was proof that I could make myself a perfectly comfortable life with just me and the cats, but now it’s just a storage place that’s emptying much too slowly. I want to be gone.

I had planned to take a few weeks to move, transfer all the computer stuff this weekend, culminating in the final furniture transfer the last weekend of the month, but now I just want out of here. I can actually feel the stress, a kind of pressure against my throat and my soft palate (what a weird place to carry stress) and an itchy anxiety under my breastbone. My fingerbones feel like they’ve been hollowed out and poured full of itch and static.

Maybe I should just sweep the contents of my workdesk into a couple of garbage bags, toss ’em in the car, and go.