Cohabitation

So, all in all, I’d say the move went really well. Moving is never easy, mostly because like a lot of things, you start off hoping to be organized and maneuver your way through the seemingly endless amounts of sh*t that you own, thinking you will probably store it in the same place you stored it in your old place. So you mark boxes that say obnoxiously cryptic things like “kitchen”.

The only problem is, when you get to the new place, you don’t know where to put everything. You’re thinking about how you will ever remember where you put it all, and how accessible it should be should you ever need your cherry-pitter or avocado skinner. And you wonder how many measuring spoons you actually use and if your banged-up seen-too-much-toast toaster oven is worthy of the precious space left in your last medium sized U-haul box.

This is why moving sucks. It’s not because it’s physically demanding (it is), but because it’s an exercise in mental agility the likes of which most people avoid at any cost. "Kitchen" becomes a totally useless term, since that doesn’t really tell you where in the kitchen your four hand mixers should go. In the areas you’ve downsized as much as possible, like bathroom supplies, you realize that if you throw out one more thing, someone could reasonably infer that you are no longer girly enough given the amount of items now in your bathroom. You realize with nauseating quickness that while you’ve never actually worn that brown and puke-yellow sweater, your mother-in-law did knit it for you, and so you think twice about giving it to the Salvation Army. But you do it anyway.

How does our shit become so much a part of our emotions anyway?

The irony is that I found myself throwing away things that I’d saved since before my marriage, much to the protest of my husband, because he’d systematically tried to remove me from them emotionally. I don’t need them anymore. I’ve got stories about my trip to Slovenia, I don’t need a scrapbook about it. I still talk to the green-haired boy who took me to my first dance, I don’t need pictures of it.

The difference now is, I lived all those things, and they’ve regained their legitimacy. I don’t need evidence of who I was anymore. So the brown and puke-yellow sweater goes, as does three of the four handmixers, and a crap ton of other things I no longer need.

I talked to Sagar last night. He said his friend had a date with a girl, and the date must’ve gone well because they slept together. He said he wasn’t sure if he had plans to see her again. I stopped whatever it was I was doing and thought, does he not see something wrong with this? I wouldn’t exactly ask Sagar to tell his friend that this situation isn’t ideal, but at least he should voice some protest to his ‘girl’friend about his friend's actions. I am a girl after all. I pang loyalty. A girl, generally speaking, does not go to bed with a man she has no intention of seeing, at least not after one date. Of course, any girl worth her salt knows that most men don’t want to see a girl again who does such things on the first date, though I’ve never been offered a good explanation as to why not. I however, know many girls who are not worth their salt, and I therefore place the onus of good behavior on the man. I’m cruelly sexist that way, but if men want to be the dominant gender, they should expect a modest increase in responsibility. I found myself a bit disgusted by the whole thing, and simultaneously happy that I would not be in the dating world again should all go as well as it has been.

And aside from the occasionally annoying bleeding between sexual trysts and a tendency to be messed with on a mental level I would say Sagar and I have all the makings of a real-life, long-term relationship, so much so that I did not panic or freak out in a completely female way when he gave me a copy of the key to his apartment this weekend, in the very same spot we first kissed. When my mother asked me what that meant “exactly”, I told her it was the next step in a relationship that had passed the initial hurdles, survived a handful of ups and downs, quietly exited the honeymoon stage or at least stared it down a few times, but wasn’t exactly ready to be declared permanent. Cohabitation is, at best, a halfway point to engagement, and at least a nod in the general direction of “I like you so much, I’d like to see you every day”.

Of course, we’re not really cohabitating, not yet anyway. I’m still firming living in Kansas City with my feet still firmly planted in the soils of the underpaid and even more underappreciated, training my older and much better paid colleague, I’m still married on paper.

But it would be a liar if I said that the stress of a relationship I actually want to be in and a job I couldn't hate more isn't completely fucking with me. I have a suspicion I'm also bleeding because of stress, though more sinister things could be brewing. I'm not known to have the best female system after all. The fact that I essentially forgot to do what my job basically rests upon this morning is probably a better sign.