One Box At a Time

I don’t remember all of my addresses, that’s a lot of numbers to know and numbers are not my strong suit. I do however remember every town and city I lived in. Not just the names of them, but their aesthetics. I remember how the traffic slowed down at night and all I heard were crickets and cicadas, when it was 2am without looking at a clock by the laughing and chaos in the street, what stores were busier when school let out, the smells of bacon and eggs with some type of cinnamon bakery item on Sunday mornings. So many sensory memories, it would take me ten pages to describe all of what I remember. The sensory memories blur together at times, like painting with watercolors using too much water. 

They aren’t my clearest memories though. Moving out of my many homes have been the most vivid memories, not moving in or anything sensory related. Bizarre right? Was my excitement for the next adventure that intense? Did I want to leave and get to the next location as fast as I could? Had everything that had happened behind the doors of that address need to be filed away? I’m sure it’s all of the above, plus some. 

You see, it was easy for me, to just get up and go, “start over.” I always had a good job or was working multiple jobs. I never moved blindly, I always had a “plan.” I had a lot of friends and acquaintances plus socializing came natural to me. Was a job and money and adventure the answer though? Maybe it was at the time, all three things have given me knowledge and experience in life that many have not nor will ever see. But was it the real answer, to go, to run, to chase? My head was always attached to my body on every move, well, sometimes tighter than others. So I still “packed” everything in that brain of mine, I had no choice right? Think of this, if you stack a pile of books high enough they are bound to fall down eventually. Get my drift? I just kept stacking and stacking “stuff” with every move not realizing one day it would all come full circle.

 The brain is a fascinating machine; it absorbs, remembers and protects us all at the right times. Just like anything else though, once it gets too full it has to overflow somehow. Don’t misunderstand me, my moves, all of the “new”, I always looked forward too. Hell yea! That was the excitement, living in the now. What I didn’t realize at the time was that I was bringing boxes and boxes of cerebral items I should have gotten rid of before accumulating more. 

To this day the memory of packing one box at a time to find out what was going to be behind door number 1-23 are still the brightest moving reels in my mind. I can still feel the excitement and remember saying “well I’m moving” and that fixed everything.