Saying Good-Bye Is The Fucking Worst

I said good-bye to my dog Simon yesterday. I’ve been saying for the past year that particular day would be the hardest part of this process and I hope I wasn’t wrong because man, yesterday sucked. I’ve had Simon for more than five years, since he was just a puppy, and he is absolutely the love of my life and the best dog in the world. I spent all of yesterday morning in tears, while Simon leaned against my legs or crawled into my lap to lick my face and cuddle against my neck. He’ll be living with TLC while I’m in London; she’s promised to set up regular Skype dates for us. It’s not that I don’t think Simon isn’t smart enough to work a laptop, but the lack of flexible digits or a thumb is a hindrance to him.

I leave in 25 hours and the past day has been constant realizations of stuff I should’ve done ages ago, but didn’t. “FUCK,” I’ve screamed, jumping up from the dinner table, “I forgot to mend my winter coat! I’ve known it’s needed repair since two winters ago; why didn’t I do it then?” Man, past Liz is the worst. She probably decided to have a Doctor Who marathon and let September 2012 Liz worry about the coat and the checkbook balancing, and now September 2012 Liz thinks that past Liz is a fucking bitch.

I am finding this pressure uncomfortable. Maybe I’ll go have a Doctor Who marathon and let future Liz deal with a ripped coat. (I know future Liz well enough to suspect that she’ll be tweeting in December about what a fucking bitch past Liz is.)

Bibliophilia

            Please don’t misunderstand me – I love my family. I am devoted to my friends in the States. I am going to have an actual meltdown when I say goodbye to my beloved bulldog/border collie mix Simon.

            Furthermore, I don’t see myself as excessively materialistic. I like my comforts, but I’m pretty chill about the whole notion of possessions. People before things, you know?

            However, there is one arena in which the “people before things” philosophy falls away, and that is books. I love books. I hoard books. Every place I’ve ever lived has had shelves full of books, with more books crammed into, under and around every flat surface. I was the nerdy kid in elementary school who always got busted for reading under her desk, and now I’m the nerdy chick who chooses handbags based on how many books I estimate I can cram into it. I’m moving to the UK to study publishing because by god, it is high time this obsession made me some money.

            Of course, when you’re moving across the Atlantic, you really have to pare down your possessions. The questions I’ve been wrestling with these past few months haven’t been “how will I stay in touch with my mother?” or “will I be able to make it back to the States for my best friend’s wedding?” but “what books am I taking with me?” and “holy cats, how am I going to part with the rest of them?”

            After three purges, I’ve sold off eight boxes of books to my used bookstore, and I still have a whole bookcase that’s crammed to the gills. It’s amazing how many books you can acquire in a quarter of a century. I’m getting down to the books that it’s going to be hard for me to part with – I remain incredibly attached to a lot of the things that started my love affair with books, so I have a whole stash of young-adult feminist fantasy novels in the vein of Tamora Pierce and Patricia C. Wrede. At the risk of sounding like a capital-L Loser (too late!), those books were hugely important to me in my formative years, and surrendering them is going to be like losing friends.

            I still haven’t decided what I’m taking with me. How do you decide what’s important enough to carry on your back across an ocean?