ONE-box

there's a change that has taken hold of me, one box @ a time. i have come upon the famous 5 year itch. it came upon me one morning when i was walking through seattle and realized that i was no longer awed by this city; the way i once was. so, i am currently selling off pieces of me. one book, cd and knickknack @ a time; i have never had very much-seeking to have less. i have never defined myself by money or clothes and have never been interested holding onto things for sentimental reasons.

change happens slowly and comes overtime, realizing that living seattle is no longer the idealistic city i once thought it was-has been eye opening for me. i have moved every 5-10 years since the age of 10 and i think in a way i have become used to moving. i looked at my boxes the last few days in preparation for my yardsale and realized that it was time to shed parts of me i have held onto. shedding my belongings is also a way for me to shed the things that i have been carrying psychological garbage and the physical.

as a poet in this city i have crafted poems in a way that i wouldn't have had the chance if it wasn't for the niave mistakes i made when i first arrived here. i fell in love with vashon island and the purple haze that floating like expensive perfume. it was eerily similar to the village i lived in norway-and i thought i was mature enough to settle in a small community. right after my plane landed the job market frozeup and went into a 2 year coma; it's now coming out of.

i met a beautiful, sweet carpenter that i fell for who was in love with someone else-lived with an alcholic borderline "law" student(conman,) lived briefly in a boarding house with a drugaddict, and a man that had sex with his dog. i lived with one guy for nearly 3 years and forfeited the living situation to move in with someone that managed to place neatly in his boxof abuse. i am grateful for the people i have met in this city, people that haven't made it into angry, bitter poems or pityparties. people that have been there. period. that has shown me that i can be better than where i am or who i am with.

the boxes i have carried with me aren't going with me on the next leg of my journey. my table, utensils, and other knickknacks will find a home somewhere else. i hope that my old shirts keeps someone warm at night, that someone will find the pieces of me that i am shedding of some use to them. i am sitting here listening to the gardenstate soundtrack, it's symbolic; i listened to it last fall after my i left my abuser. i stumbled into oprah the other night and saw myself in one of the women on the television, how he convinced, lied and sought to destroy the very essence of who i was. emotional abusers are snakes in grass-you don't see what the abuser has done to you till you've been bitten; it's harder to heal after leaving one because of the damage that is inflicted overtime. when i finally saw where i had been, and i could start rebuilding myself, it's still a work in progress.

when i leave seattle for my next adventure i won't be wearing pink colored glasses, my view is no longer obstructed by icebergs larger than the titanic. what i will sell will be replaced, one step @ a time-as i walk away from a man i will never forget. the smell of shilshole marina in summer and tourists walking dumstruck through pike's place, rain spitting, balmy winters, and bad droughts in summer. i will miss mountains i moved out here to hike; but has been unable. so, each day till i leave i will savour the cliched seattle things, busses that never arrive when expected, weathermen predicting the obvious, my poet circle, my bowling league-coffee made just the way i like it. like the peter gabriel song, "life carries on," it's finding directions; when it's foggy& seeing clearly.