nestless
May is a month of leaving. Living in an area with four college campuses, the last few weeks are clogged with students stuffing the trunks of their cars to the top, dumping their undesirables into huge dumpsters, and wearing the same few outfits while the rest of their clothes get jammed into a suitcase. Leases end, apartments get emptied out, and landlords ask for their keys back.
For one blissful summer, I got to escape this. I moved out of my college apartment in May of 2021, but in 2022 I got the pleasure of watching all the moving from afar. I was safe in my little back bedroom, where all my possessions had a home and there was room for more to be collected. My cat was happy, finding new sun patches in the living room or sunroom to snooze in while I was at work. My spice cabinet was full, and I was finding that I always had those weird, hardly-ever-used ingredients on hand (red wine vinegar, vegetable broth, etc.), which had literally never happened to me before. I had bookshelves big enough for my current library but could easily fill the two highest shelves with more. I had more than one plant, and they weren’t fake, either. I was grown up, I was building my nest.
But, like I said, May is a month of leaving. And this past month, that move-out fever hit me like an 18-wheeler going 90 MPH on 81 North.
Now would probably be a good time to explain why I hate moving so much. I am a nester. And what I mean by that is I collect things, I slowly and thoroughly fill up my space with all the things I love and all the things that make me feel peaceful and at home (not to be confused with a hoarder, I have a normal amount of belongings and each one has a proper place to go). I’m a homebody, I prioritize the security and safeness that comes with a good home atmosphere. So when I started packing up, it was like my nest - my home - was falling apart. Half of my clothes were missing, my bedroom walls were totally bare, bookshelves were cleared out, and everything was being condensed into ugly yellow and black totes.
It only got worse from there. Plans for an apartment in Providence beginning in June crashed and fricken’ burned, to say the least. And if you’ve ever tried to look for an apartment in April, May, or June, you know just how shitty that can be. But, lucky for me, my uncle has an empty hunting camp way out in a cow pasture (because it’s the North Country, and of course he does). And this part is actually a not-so-bad quirk, dare I even say silver lining?
eh, maybe scratch the silver lining part.
BUT I can continue my apartment search rent free and save up over the summer, and I won’t have to couch surf/live out of my car or worry about utility bills. Because, I don’t know if you knew this already, hunting camps way out in a cow pasture don’t have electricity or running water. They just have cows. And pastures.
Back to the nesting. Or the lack thereof. I had to put a good portion of my precious precious stuff into storage. Not only was my nest disintegrating, I wasn’t even going to be able to build somewhere else for the summer. Bed? Gone. Books? Gone. Kitchen supplies, my lovely green chair, my cute decorative pillows? Gone, gone, gone. And this rocked my world. I just didn’t really have anything of my own anymore. I moved into a space that was already filled with someone else’s belongings and would have to rely on my friends and family for a lot of things, which is a really difficult feat for someone who constantly feels like a burden. When will my welcome run out? When will it stop being fun and quirky that I need to use someone’s shower and start being an inconvenience?
From here, I’m not really sure what to expect. There’s bound to be some good times and fun experiences intertwined with discomfort and a constant feeling of being unsettled. But I guess the good thing about being a nester is that I can always build a new one.
To living amongst cows in the meantime,
Lo
