“And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.”

— T.S. Eliot

My first apartment was on the 1100 of W. Grace Street. I was 18 years old. I had moved in with my new punk rock gal pal, Lara and my high school friend Melanie. I was fresh out of my first semester at Radford by pure freedom overload and had decided that maybe I needed to stay closer to home, besides what really was so bad about attending VCU?

We lived in a one bedroom apartment for $310 total a month I think, something ridiculous and well missed here. Melanie and I had two twin beds on opposite corners of a living room, we were going to be like sisters! Lara got the bedroom because, well, she was kinda the big, scary sis who protected us and we honestly didn't want to fight her on it. As you may have imagined, the Adolescents which blissfully blared from our apartment along with mesh and lace adorned floors and a Manic Panic infested bathroom, did not bind the chains of sisterhood for too long. Three women in a home is a recipe for disaster, which I didn't really learn until I was well into my 20s.

I would follow Lara to a new apartment on Grace again, but this time I would barely be seen in it. It had become a homemade loft infested punkfest, and I had a new boyfriend I had to securely adhere myself to. I would then start a transitional adventure lasting most my life, living on almost every street in the Fan, two residences in the West End (horrid experience), a home in the Near West End, an "OMG I've made it" loft in Tobacco Row, 2 homes in Church Hill, and brief stint in Mechanicsville with Mom. This does not include the five years spent living in two apartments in New York. I presently have conquered a new area of Richmond --- Northside.

In 27 years, I've moved 24 times. I'm about to move for the 25th time. Each time I've had to go through things from the past whether it be furniture, knick knacks, jewelry, clothes, or mementoes, and each time it's just as hard. We accumulate so many things during our years and some things are just really hard to part with --- like my Doc Martens from high school or currently the two Wasily chair replicas I obtained during my marriage. Each thing holds nostalgic resilience.

Every time I move I get stuck on one box, the box with all the photos of years gone by, of love letters and postcards from distance places and wine corks with dates and names. It is the one box I can never part with. I'm a sentimental person to begin with and during all the moves of my life, I've had to get rid of "things". I have a hard time with purging even though in the end it feels great, but for me it's about the history. I love that as the years go by, I can always look in this box to see who I am and would become. I always had this notion when I was younger, I would have one of those chests at the end of the bed, like my Abuela (grandmother) did. That chest would host my family history with photos and journals that I would pass along to my kids. I know very little of my mother's family, and so I wanted something that would retain my chronicles. Alas, no kids.

It took six apartments before my ex husband moved in with me. SIX. He stayed at each one as though he lived there, but never did his things commingle with mine until the sixth one. You learn a lot when you live with people, you get annoyed a lot when you live with people. They tend to develop their habits of leaving cereal bowls on the coffee table or never turning off the lights. I in turn have my own quirks consisting of open drawers and evidently putting the roll of toilet paper in the wrong direction. In the 24 moves I've made I've lived alone in three places and since my ex was a musician he was gone for weeks at a time making me feel like I loved alone often. Anyone who has ever been in a roommate situation or has been in a cohabited relationship, understands the challenges it can pose.

I had one roommate who thought it was weird that I handwashed my delicates. I had done so since I was 13. Mom taught me to because she said the machine would destroy them otherwise and that lingerie was "not chiiip", her inability to say cheap made me smile. My ex husband liked little pieces of paper throughout the house. I had one girlfriend who didn't think neutering cats was a good idea, until we ended up with 12 of them at one time. I had one roommate who thought sex was an Olympic sport and I had one who thought glitter and pasty glue looked great on my area rug. At this age, living alone seems more appealing.

So, here we are at move 25. I'm not moving as much of the past which has been quite liberating. It isn't easy, I mean letting go of a certain amount of shoes in my closet has been quite challenging, but it is for my own good. For so long I've held onto these ... things. Do these tangible place-markers really hold anything more than just that, a place in my space. Embarking on a new journey, having decided to move with a certain someone after many years of getting over the familiar of someone else, is in itself a letting go of the past. The entanglement of "our" things with toothbrushes residing next to each other and suits and skirts intermingling in the darkness of the closets. Drums replaced by guitars, jazz posters replaced by the moodiness of post metal art, and sheet music replaced by electrical schema, it's all very different, and yet the risk is very much the same.

This migration smells different. Boxes are stacking up, which the procrastinator in me stands in disbelief that such a thing has happened two weeks prior to moving. The last remnant of furniture I had with my ex sits lonely in the living room, awaiting a new home with someone new, the last of the physical past. In two weeks, I will live in a house for the first time with someone who has an allergy to dishwashing and makes really weird food combinations, but shows up with flowers randomly to fill my vase and will hang all my art on the wall perfectly. For the first time in a long time, I'm more willing to box the past than unpack the future. It's a scary place to be in. As I purge the old and familiar, I can only think that I've decided to make space for the new and unexplored. Isn't that what moving is all about, creating a new space, new memories, and new patterns? It isn't the things that make home a home, it's the people who fill it and now I have a new starting point. All I can do now is hope that when I unpack, I won't be bringing any ghosts with me and that opening a new door will lead to more things to fill my chest.