by raien

Skittles
(written July 19th)

Apartment moves are traumatic. I realized that about five minutes ago as I dug through a recycling bin to find something I’d lost. It was a red plastic heart that had been filled with Skittles at one point — one of many things Nora sent me last Valentines Day.

She paid over $20 to Express mail it to me so it would arrive on time for Valentines. I’d kept the box it was mailed in for the last 5 months because it was filled with some nice memories. Yesterday, I filled it with year-old notebooks and binders and brought it across town to my new apartment.

Priorities

Moves are defined by what you decide to take with you and what you throw away. Sometimes you don’t even know what’s important to you until you’re facedown inside of a blue City of San Diego recycling can.

The day before the move, my roommate asked me if the empty red Skittles container that’d been hidden in the cabinet since February was trash. I said yes. The day of the move, I was ripping open garbage bags in the July heat trying to find it.

When I moved out after college, I threw away twenty acceptance letters I got from law schools. I kept the acceptance letter I got from USC’s screenwriting program. I gave away my speakers and stereo receiver but kept the broken radio that my mom got for me for Christmas. I sold my television, but I kept a green plastic innertube:

“You got in! I know you’ll stay afloat in law school -Nora” was written on the side in black magic marker.

Goodbye

Saying goodbye to people is more difficult than saying goodbye to things. My video camera didn’t cry when I sold it the day before I moved from Gainesville. Nora did.

I’ve never cried about a move probably because I never really knew what “goodbye” meant growing up. Except for moving from New York to Florida before I was old enough to care, I’ve stayed in the same house, with the same two parents, and the same one brother for my entire life. We never even changed the living room furniture.

The first time I learned what goodbye really meant was the day I drove with my mom and dad from Orlando to Gainesville to drop my brother off for his first week of college. We drove there with him; I told him, “see you later,” and I didn’t think anything of it.

When we drove back without him, my mom knew there was no, “see you later” for her; she said goodbye to a chapter of her life that was over and was never coming back. As soon as we pulled out of the loading zone, she cried long enough for me to realize what moving and growing up was really all about.

A piece of plastic

That might be why I jumped inside of a garbage can for a piece of plastic.

It didn’t take more than a minute to find the Skittles heart. And now, in this new apartment, it’s on the kitchen counter hiding somewhere behind the dish towels. You probably wouldn’t even see it if you weren’t looking for it. Most times, I forget that it’s even there.

But it doesn’t matter whether I see it every day; what matters is that I know it’s there, and it’s not going anywhere — at least until the next move.

You can walk away from a lot of things in your life, but don’t lose your heart.