A Packing Lesson

Yesterday I began the official process of packing. My family left for a vacation and will not be back before I leave, so we said our final farewells and left it with a promise that if I get married I will bring my husband back (obviously ever conversation about what I will do when I go home had to include that I will find a husband. Details have even been discussed: will I look for a rich one? big? one that lives near my parents? Clearly returning to my home country presents a plethora of significant other options...). Then I sadly walked back into the house and started gathering my belongings into two bags. Weird, eh? I’ve been making piles of things all week, so it wasn’t like I had not thought about it yet. But setting up the officially packing station in the middle of my floor made it undeniable: I am leaving.

I spent a while putting things in their rightful places, trying to be organized so that everything I need for the next week and a half is accessible and won’t require shifting the carefully constructed balance of weight. I felt like I was making good progress. Then I stopped and looked around me.

There is something very odd to me about cleaning and packing. I don’t think I have ever participated in an overhaul of the pack up one’s life from the entire year caliber that did not involve, at one point along the way, things looking way worse then when I started. At one point it looked like the tropical storm that is rumored to be heading towards Hanoi had come and gone and had hit only my living space.

But now it’s a day later, and the mess is relatively gone. Granted, I still have a little ways to go, but the closets are empty, my desk is cleared off and you can see the floors. The transition from my things living here to being on their way home is almost over.

But my personal transition is far from over, in fact, it has barely even started. I feel myself entering the chaos, the tropical storm phase where everything looks and feels worse than when you began. Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited, just like I was excited to pack and be done with it. I look forward to being settled and home, but I don’t look forward to the mess of getting used to it all: of creating routine there, finding a job, and readjusting. I know myself; I know at one point I will feel worse about my decisions than I do right now. But I also know that you have to make your way through the cluttered path to a place of contentment and comfort. Hopefully today’s packing lesson can stay with me in this next month, I think I’ll probably need it...