Tonight will be my last night in the apartment. It has been a scramble getting everything packed and accounted for. Despite my attempts at proper planning and organization, the packing process is always painful for me. I always make a list, but it doesn’t seem to matter. Complete. Shitshow.

Earlier this year, my girlfriend at the time, Shani, was watching me pack my belongings for a flight home. On a couple of occasions, I would fancy myself done, head over to the bed to relax with her, and realize I’d forgotten something before I could sit down, explaining that I always had this problem with packing. The third time that happened, Shani stopped me and asked me to sit down.

“You know what your problem is?”

“Awesomeness, with a side of obsession?”

“Um, no… It’s anxiety.”

Shani was right. What I’d always recognized as a family trait–overemphasis on preparedness and paranoia that the next forgotten object would be our last–was actually just nerves. Watching my parents struggle to leave the house on time after days (weeks, sometimes) of careful packing and preparation and tensely adhered-to wake-up calls early on the morning of said departure, I used to wonder, “Oh crap. Am I forgetting something?” If they had prepared so well and were still frantic, I, having packed with significantly less forethought, must be entirely ill-prepared.

The paranoia only built from there. We used to ready ourselves for all kinds of contingencies. I remember once hiding my most prized binder of baseball cards in our dryer “just in case” our house got broken into. Mind you, we lived on the most bland of neighborhood streets. No one would have ever been interested in our belongings. Certainly not my Fleer Ultra Todd Van Poppel rookie card.

So it goes without saying that I’ve been reared for transitional anxiety, second-guessing every detail, concerning myself with the analysis of the most remote possibility for failure. It’s a stressful empire over which to preside. But, on the bright side, I’m always the one you can count on for a piece of gum or extra batteries for your flashlight. For an event like this, I had my work cut out for me.

Here are some notables from the move out:

1. I have way too much stuff. (Didn’t see that coming?) For living in what essentially amounts to a small bedroom, I could comfortably occupy an apartment three times this size with my furniture and belongings. I have three guitars, for Christ’s sake. And one of them is completely unplayable. Moral: If pack-ratting is a disease, register me for quarantine.
2. Packing for a trip while moving out of your tiny apartment is both convenient and impossible. Laying out that suit for the big day? Great, just put it over there for a second while you look for your dapper shoes. Where are those, by the way? Oh yeah, under that pile of towels. You go to move the towels, but need to put them where the suit is. Fine. So you hang the suit up behind the front door, and go back to looking for the–what were you looking for? You open the front door and step outside for a moment of clarity. Hmm. Maybe you’ll remember after you go brush your teeth like you’ve been wanting to. You walk into the bathroom, leaving the door open. Oh crap, you forgot you packed your toothbrush. What about your travel toothbrush? You packed that, too. Do you need both, though? So you sit down on the bathroom floor to think about it, and realize you need to clean the bathroom before you leave. So you start doing that instead. When you’re halfway done, you come back in for a glass of water and see your dapper shoes on the floor and remember you have to finish packing your wedding attire. But your suit isn’t on the bed where you left it. That’s where you left it, right? It isn’t in the closet… How are you still reading this? It’s torturous.
3. Remember when I twirled Linda above my head on the karaoke dance floor? That was awesome.
4. I have to keep some of my stuff in my apartment. All of my furniture. Decorations. Kitchen utensils. Cleaning products. Clothes and towels I don’t anticipate on using. I can take a limited amount of stuff with me, but can’t rely on having too much space in my truck or office. This means I have to both trust my new tenants and accept the fact that some thing(s) might go broke or missing. The night stand I built from scratch. Navajo icon figurines from a trip with my parents. Canvas prints of photos from vacations past. That vodka in the freezer. Important stuff. I have to accept the possibility that I wouldn’t see it again.
5. I want to clean the place as best I can. For two reasons. One, because that’s how I would expect it to be done for me. And two, if you hand someone trash, they’ll treat it like trash. If you present them with something delicate and pretty, the might break it, but if they do and they’re not an asshole, maybe they’ll pay to replace it. I am hoping to enact my favorite unspoken lesson in self-fulfilling prophecy.

After a long night of getting my stuff together, I finally reached my absurdly high standard for preparation. Tomorrow, I’ll turn over the keys.

– TOH