Moving out and on

It is a Friday evening and my last night at The Shithole.

I am buried neck deep in packing all my shits and deciding what to do with them. As per tradition, I put on my Dido Concert DVD. It is the same one that I play whenever I am packing to move house.

Why Dido? I’m not sure. Maybe it is because there is this particular song Dido introduced during the concert as something she wrote when she was homeless and living from motel to motel. The song is unusually poignant to me. It is called Life for Rent.

A friend of mine commented, “Why are you always moving house wan?” when I rejected an invitation this weekend on account of having to move house. That got me thinking and I started counting. This is the 18th time I am moving house since leaving home at 16. That equals to more than once every year.

But that doesn’t mean I like moving house. I’ll do it only because I need to, and I have needed to do so many times in my life. The Queen will know this – that I am a solid creature of habit when it comes to having a roof over my head. I like staying put in one place. I like knowing where I will lay my head to sleep every night. I like to know exactly where I can go and hideout when troubles of the world gets to me.

And the sad part of this particular move is, I don’t know where I am going. I am just dispersing my possession amongst friends and carrying the essentials with me. About 3 days ago, the place I was going to has suddenly become unavailable. About 2 hours ago, my plans was changed again and I had to head somewhere else. My head is about to burst with the uncertainty.

In the midst of packing, I receive another phone call where I had to reject further obligations over the weekend because I couldn’t get my head around this move. The person on the other end of the line got angry. She told me that I do not need to bring other people down with me just because I am feeling this way. She said I brought all these troubles upon myself anyway.

So you can imagine after I was done packing, I was feeling worse for wear.

As much as I have verbally called this place The Shithole. I have never felt it was that. This was our home and I thoroughly enjoyed my time here. Of course he brought it up during “The-Last-Straw-Off-The-Camel-Back-Fight” that I often demean our nest and look down on the way we lived. If I had really felt that, I really wouldn’t have been here till now but I felt it is unnecessary to defend myself at this point.

During the last month, I have been hopping from places to places but when all my options run out, I come back to The Shithole. The funny thing is, when I am not here, I don’t think about the life I had before. It was all forward, new and challenging. I was able to consciously block out all thoughts. But whenever I sleep on what used to be our bed in the Shithole, I always dream about us. And in those dreams, we are still together. And happy. I believe it is the vibes from this place. After all, our fight technically only began a couple weeks ago and prior to that, it was months and months of good times. It felt as if this place, and all its belongings are holding on to the good memories only despite our current circumstances.

But I am looking forward to a new place, new challenges and a new life. The past weeks have taught me so many things. I have re-opened myself to the world, reacquainted myself with people whom I have grown apart from, explored options I never had the energy for and frankly, it has been the most painful yet interesting phase of my life this year thus far.

That is why I know that I must not return anymore if I want to continue moving forward. As much as I hate homelessness, I hate digressing even more.