Small World, Big Life

I packed my current journal, the blush pink one with golden ginkgo leaves on the cover, into a moving box labeled “office” before I was done with it. There were about fifteen pages left unfilled, and I’m sure I would have filled them up during this time, but it was too big and too heavy and too limited in its available space to make the cut.

We’re about halfway through loading up our storage unit here in Arizona. I’m writing this from the grey patterned armchair next to the living room window, Guinness’ “business chair,” as we’ve so lovingly called it.

When I took a seat and pulled the blanket onto my lap, Guinness huffed and laid on the floor at my feet, expressing his annoyance that he could not sit in his chair and look out the window as the sun comes up. But it was the only armchair left, so I claimed it.

We have been working our way through selling furniture and have so far said goodbye to the grey recliner, the rust orange IKEA guest room dresser set, and the small beige ottoman with the black stripes on top. We are still spending our days answering messages of varying interest and intent about our bedroom Mid Mod wooden dresser set, the grey ottoman that also serves as a table for our couch dinners, the grill, the chair I’m sitting in.

We loaded up my car last weekend full of Goodwill donations. Plates and bakeware and clothes that no longer fit or have lingered since college and no longer get worn with any regularity. Bed sheets and throw blankets and purses and shoes and earrings from the cheap spinning display racks at Nordstrom.

I recently finished my last full week with my current employer, at least - last in-person full week. An email went out to all staff at my school to let them know that I’m leaving. It took me nearly an hour to draft the email, even though it was only about four lines. The responses started coming in right away:

Subject line: “SAD!!!.”

Subject line: “You can’t leave!” Body: “You can’t.”

People knocked on my office door and stopped me in the halls and gave hugs and made offers of their guest rooms. I took it all in each day and cried in the car on my way home every afternoon.

How could I have only lived in this place, worked with these people, made a life, in only a year and a half? How is it true that I’m leaving and moving on to the next thing already?

My brain hasn’t caught up with reality until this week, when our home started to become a house again as we packed pictures from the walls and took magnets off the fridge, souvenirs from other adventures. Even though I’ve “known” for weeks that it’s true, we’re leaving, my brain has lagged behind.

I would describe the way I’ve been feeling as if my brain were submerged underwater and sealed tightly in a jar no matter how hard I try to gain access by twisting then tapping the lid on the counter ever so gently, or whatever the trick is.

I have felt a bit like I’m malfunctioning, like I know the things I need to do in a day - cancel the gym membership, switch my car insurance plan to storage, interview for other jobs just in case “virtual” doesn’t work out, text my friends and family back who gently ask for updates on the plan even if there is no plan, remember to eat once the dizziness hits, pack but not that because what if I need that?.

I feel grateful, overwhelmed, a little excited for what’s next. I feel guilty for what’s current, leaving on such short notice.

Sometimes jobs don’t work out or houses don’t work out or being across the country from your family doesn’t work out, but sometimes when your mindset is “this is a temporary place, a 3-5 year place,” life still manages to explode around you in an incredible and unexpected…something.

As if you take a step back and look around to see skyscrapers when you only intended to put up a parking garage, or a tent.

Life got built here, in only a year and a half.

I know I’ll be back to visit and to move our things from storage to our life in another place.

I know I’ll “like” the posts of my friends and colleagues as I watch their lives march on.

I know I’ll send pictures of the dog, my coworkers’ real favorite coworker.

I’m sure I’ll run into people from this stretch of the life I built in the Starbucks line at LAX or in the halls at a conference in Salt Lake City.

I know this because the world is small.

I just never expected my life to be so big.

Yours,

Emily Rose // Miss Magnolia