I apologize for missing the past few weeks. I was packing for a move. And then I moved. And then in short order, the move fell apart and I was left scrambling for housing. (I found it. Thankfully.)
I’ve had a great sense of impermanence stretching back many years. Maybe not so much wanderlust as wishing I could have step into an alternate universe of myself, or wandering if this place or that would make me happy. A restlessness for how to feel whole.
When I moved into my California apartment last year, the landlord had one weird hang-up: the sheer number of addresses I’d had. Moves, long term and short term. Different cities. The longest I’d ever stayed in an apartment as an adult was two years. When I move at the end of the month, an unexpected event, I will have lived in my 11th town / city. Lucky me.
There’s a feeling with on-the-run-ness that carries with it an unusual existential feeling. Right now, as I’ve told a therapist, I don’t feel like I necessarily have a home. There’s not a place that, should I need, I can return to and feel security. Perhaps it’s also because I have had to scramble to make ends meet so many times — and sometimes still feel trapped in the cycle of paycheck-to-paycheck. It’s perhaps that feeling of insecurity that feeds into all the others to feel rootless, fluttering helplessly in the wind.
To list out the moves and the apartments is hard, but it’s something like:
Childhood home in western Nebraska > New house, same town > dorms on the other end of the state in Lincoln > dumpy house with college friends > dumpy studio alone > summer housing for an internship in Little Rock > back to Lincoln in a garden level where my mental health went off the rails > a decrepit building with a room nicknamed “El Ocho” because it somehow had eight walls in one room > first apartment in Philly > second apartment in Philly > group house in DC that was held together by duct tape in the middle of a fancy neighborhood > Capitol Hill apartment > Lincoln studio, top floor, always too hot even with the AC going > house of a friend > a month-to-month in Lincoln in a place formerly inhabited by methheads and where wasps lived in the AC > South Philly with a hoarder > West Philly, where I at one point had a nervous breakdown > another West Philly apartment, deeper west > “Casa Cardboardo,” so named because of how shoddily constructed it was, and I barely made rent every month after deciding to live alone > a roommate again > moving in with a partner in a too-small apartment > moving into a much larger apartment still in West Philly > Dousman, Wisconsin in what amounted to a boarding house > a summer sublet in Milwaukee where, in some moments of darkness, I found myself drinking fiercely > a Madison, WI apartment with partner and three mammals > break-up, move back to Lincoln in a well maintained apartment with a kitchen too small for human habitation > out to Mountain View, CA, moving everything in my 1999 Honda because my last move had tapped out all my resources > an apartment in SF where the roommates disappeared, leaving me freshly moved in and needing immediately to move out > at the end of the month, a studio in Oakland. 29. Did I count that right? I’m not ready for number 30. Also background checks are a nightmare when you have to list everyone you’ve ever lived with.
It’s a lot. I’m not counting extremely brief periods of friend couches, hotels, etc. that were transitional steps. In that time, I also frequently experienced a lot of income instability. In Philly, I maxed out at working for jobs at once, a “feat” I would not recommend to anyone, but I was trying desperately to make ends meet even though the “best” hourly pay was $15 an hour. In my second Lincoln return, my brain fried from book completion and the break-up, I found myself no longer able to quite make it on freelance alone, and had to take a job at a bar and another job at a historical / genealogical society while still writing. Freelancing is great if you have someone else to pick up the bills when your check hasn’t come in, but not so much living on your own.
I had intended to write about this all week, but of course, the time I chose to sit down and write it was when I just really didn’t feel like doing any more packing. Can’t these things pack themselves? After hiring movers — a pretty penny — I’m finding myself wandering if I can afford them again after just a month. Tapped myself out on a move, had things fall through, now finding myself moving again, on the run again, questioning my budget again, even though I’m saving $500+ on rent. Where will all my things go? How much will need to go into a storage garage? Can I afford yet to switch storage units anyway? Maybe that’ll have to wait a little longer. It’s a lot of questions without a lot of answers, and I’ve found myself stressed by the entire process, unable to focus. And constantly wanting burritos. The neighborhood I thought I was going to live in here has great burritos. They invented the cat sized one known as the Mission burrito here after all, or so I’m told. But one tenant dropped out last minute. The anchor tenant abruptly left due to a family emergency. I was alone in an apartment, and the process of finding new people to live with proved difficult, so I sought out other places. But trying to stay proved elusive, and I narrowly dodged accidentally looking at an SRO.
So a new place. Mountain View was never home. My apartment fluctuated with the temperature outside, sometimes unbearably hot, sometimes unbearably cold. The town a simulacrum, with flourishes of a real place but something missing.
Maybe Oakland is the place. I’m tired of chasing after another. A studio is small … is a Murphy bed a dirtbag move? (Just kidding, I am already a dirtbag.)
Mental health
Stress, anxiety, depression, loneliness — the usual, but perhaps amplified by the stress of everything going on. With the wildfires going, my asthma has also been particularly bad, to the extent that sometimes, being in my own living room is too much and I have to retreat to my bedroom, where I feel like I’m Rear Window-ing just a bit much. I haven’t managed my day-to-day well.
Science
I have been too scrambled to find anything for here.
Jams
Listen to Kathleen Edward’s new album Total Freedom. Have lots of feelings. Maybe do it over a nice cup of tea.