Packing up my childhood house was nothing but nauseating and painstaking work. I hated being a kid. I never felt comfortable in being a child. Finding relics of all the terrible thing that I had gone through shoved deep into my closet and under my bed is something no one ever really prepares you for. So when the movers came the last week of June and I said my goodbyes to my friends and finished up my last shifts at the optometery office I worked at, I thought YES! The hard part was finally over.
The road trip here was nothing but a blur. What could have, and honestly should have, been a 2–3 day road trip of straight driving turned into a week-long historical Route 66 nonsensical experience. We hit Vegas the first night, then Zion National Park and the Grand Canyon in Utah and Arizona. From there, we made our way to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where we had Salvadorian pupusas, before zooming right through the tip of Texas and Oklahoma. We eventually made it to Little Rock, Arkansas, where we watched the Fourth of July fireworks. Oh, but we didn't stop there, of course. We cruised over the Mississippi River, saw the Lorraine Hotel where Martin Luther King Jr. died in Memphis, Tennessee, and then passed through Alabama as fast as we could (we were not welcome there) before finally making it to home sweet home Georgia. (All of this was done with my dog and prepubescent brother, btw.) That must have been the hardest part, no?
When we finally made it to our humble abode (a fairly decent apartment complex that I shit you not is 97% indian) for the first time in months I had nothing to do. Surviving on a crappy costco air mattress and the bag of yarn I managed to sneak into the car, I had no obligations, no finals to prepare for, no college essays to write, no friends to say goodbye to, I truly had nothing. Writing this right now our stuff still has not arrived, going on over a month without a bed, my spine is starting to retaliate.
The heat here is consuming. The humidity is clinging to my hair, making it frizz beyond comprehension. College orientation came and went. Downtown Atlanta in mid-July has a funk that words cannot describe, but I got a gen chem class with lab when my counselor said there was no way, so that's that. I want to be excited, but it's like my brain won't let me. I wake up every day in a panic, like there is something extremely wrong going on, and even a month in, I don't think I have adjusted to Eastern Time yet lol.
So that's the hardest part. Sitting on my deflating air mattress in my couchless living room, wearing the same two sets of clothes because that's all I have, watching hours upon hours of The Vampire Diaries to try and distract me from what is going on in my head. Because that's the reality. I don't know. I can't predict the future. I just have to let it happen, which is incredibly hard when you're as annoying as me.
