Denial

Yesterday one of my very good friends asked me about the prospect of coming down to help me with my upcoming move. A dear friend, he just wanted to help out any way he could with my exciting new adventure. It was a very kind offer that I sort of blew off. “Oh, we don’t have to worry about that yet,” I said nonchalantly. “We’ve got plenty of time to worry about those details.”

“Um. Ok?” replied my friend questioningly. And then he abruptly changed the subject.

Last night, I sat on my couch totally relaxing, drinking a beer, doing some Sporcle quizzes online and watching the Phillies playoff game. It was good and I was happy, operating without a single ounce of urgency in anything that I was doing. Just a regular ol’ Wednesday night in a normal person’s life.

Today I rolled into work early, just so that I could leave moments later and grab breakfast with a friend before *truly* starting my work day. And then I came back, worked for a couple of hours, and left to have lunch with a couple of my girlfriends, ladies who I try to have lunch with about once a month or so. While having a fabulous, leisurely lunch at the new Thai place in town, my friend said to me, “Wow, so wait… is this really our last lunch date?”

“No, no, of course not!” I chimed in, poo-pooing her question almost mockingly. But from that point on in the lunch, somewhere way far back in the back of my head, I sat thinking to myself, Wait…is this our last lunch? No, that can’t be right.

On my way home from work today (which honestly was a pretty lame workday really…work 30 minutes, take an hour breakfast. Work two more hours, take an hour thirty for lunch…come back and work a couple more hours… leave by 4. My “schedule” is the part of this job I’ll miss the most…), I stopped by the dress shop to say hello to my wedding gown and my girlfriends who work there. When I relayed to them the date I was moving to DC, they both looked at me with eyes that bugged out like that we were in a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

“You’re moving, when?”

“Relax…not until the 13th.”

“Um, of November?”

“Yeah.” (More blank stares…coupled with the long, silent blinks and slightly gaping mouths that come packaged with said blank stares.)

“You *DO* realize that that is, like, three weeks from now, right?”

Well duh. Of course I do…Silly girls. (Wait, what?)

I came home a little flustered from that encounter to my comfy and lived in and totally put-together little place I call home. Off to my bedroom I went to change out of work clothes and into pajamas for the evening. While doing so, I definitely tripped over the FOUR loads of laundry that I have sorted out and that are currently sitting in baskets on my bedroom floor: the patient clothes which have waited to be laundered for the last, oh, I’m going to say 6 or 7 days now.

I pulled some (dirty) sweatpants from one of the baskets and slide into my slippers, readying myself for a delightful evening of baseball and writing while sitting on the couch and contentedly enjoying my downtime. Life is good, no?

There’s an old (and very lame) joke-type punch-line that very witty people throw into conversation when someone says something that completely disregards reality. Some vaudeville-type wiseacre chimes in and says “Denial…it’s not just a river in Egypt anymore.” Ba-dump-bump. CHING! (Hilarious. Really.) Annnnd, holy crap. I think that’s me.

I feel like for so long I worked so hard at figuring out what is next, worrying about whether or not I would ever have a “next job” and applying all day every day for new opportunities. I spent countless hours worrying about what was next; whether or not J and I might be able to be together; wondering if I was going to make enough money to make ends meet on my own. Constantly, every day, driven by doubt and fear and disappointment and “what-ifs.”

And then all of a sudden, finally, all of that is gone. The veil of anxiety has been lifted from my face, and my smiling mug is upturned to the sun like a sunbathing cat in a springtime windowsill. Ahhhh…. I’m not worried about any of that stuff anymore. I will soon start a new job at a new institution with good money and good people in an amazing city where J might actually get to be upon his return. I have spent a lot of time worrying about all that, expending every last speck of my energy and effort on securing all these bits and pieces. And I did it!

And now I’m done. No more worry and no more effort. Done, done, ANNNNNND done.

The problem with this, of course, is that I don’t really have the time to sit around playing on the internet and relaxing in the evenings right now. Not yet. I’ve got stuff to do.

And so, as the weekend approaches I realize that it’s time to get my ducks in a row. No more sitting around waiting to hear about what is next. Gotta get moving (literally.) Clothes to Goodwill. Books to donation. Things to be thrown, well, need to start being thrown.(Anybody need an Ab Circle Plus?) I’ve already begun the process of tying up the loose ends at work. Now it has to start happening in my house. I have the luxury of having three weeks to get this stuff done (as opposed to, you know, three days), but I have to take advantage of that starting ASAP.

So, the moving denial is coming to an end. This is happening and it’s happening *now*. I don’t get to relax. Not quite yet. In fact, my guess is that the next two months of my life are going to be a happy, sad, exciting, overwhelming, emotional blur. But that’s ok. Passing the time while J is gone is a good good thing (and this will most certainly do that!) And what’s on the other side is going to be awesome. We’ve just got to get there. So I’m officially throwing myself in the packing boat this weekend and paddling straight across the Denial. I need to quick get to the dry land on the other side that is called DC so I can start my new and exciting life. 3-2-1- Go. Somebody throw me a lifejacket already.