---
title: Stages of Moving
date: 2023-08-15
url: stages-of-moving
tags:
  - life
draft: false
---
## Stage 1: Denial & Naivety
I don't have that much stuff. I don't think packing is going to be that hard this time. I've already boxed up my books -- how much more could I need to do?

## Stage 2: Coping / Bargaining
Okay, there is actually a lot to do, but it's not so bad. I can just drop everything in the garage and focus on cleaning the apartment.

## Stage 3: False Hope
I hired movers for two and a half hours and they did a hell of a job. _I'm almost done_, I think to myself, foolishly.

## Stage 4: Penance
All of my muscles are strained and it is manifesting as pain in my sternum, so I am now convinced that I am having a stress-induced heart event as some kind of cosmic payment for my earlier insolence.

## Stage 5: False Hope Revisited
Everything has made it to the new location! There is an end in sight! I can rest a little and allow myself to heal!

## Stage 6: Humiliation, to Bring Me Back to My Lowered Station
Everything is in boxes and so I can't do simple tasks like cook or get dressed. I spend the day wearing a bathing suit instead of a bra. I still have no internet and all I want is to watch a season of _Survivor_ so I can feel some shred of normalcy.

## Stage 7: Menial Physical Labor to Remind Myself That I Am a Maggot to Be Crushed under God’s Cruel Toe
I have to wash every dish before putting it away because I have brain worms and I decided, like a fool, to wait to install a dishwasher. I am constantly bent over to unpack boxes or clean something. The mountain of Shit in Boxes never gets smaller. Things will never be normal again.

## Stage 8: Regret & (Hopefully Figurative) Self-Immolation
Who was I to think I deserved a nice place to live? What gave me these wild aspirations, this sense of entitlement? Who do I think I am?

## Stage 9: Which Appears to Me Only in the Realm of Dreams
I am unpacked and life is normal again.