FUCK MOVING
I am no stranger to moving. Given my nomadic nature I do not have enough fingers and toes to count how many times I have said fuck it and purchased a one-way ticket to wherever my strange brain decided it could be “happy”. It is with the utmost confidence that I say FUCK MOVING. Fuck packing, fuck loading, fuck driving – fuck every single aspect of it.
This move, despite my already low expectations, was particularly nightmarish.
From the start it was rife with complications. I planned my move to make sure my roommates from Hell (many stories for many other times) were none-the-wiser. I planned to have my childhood best friend move in to cover my portion of rent and utilities. The two roommates I hated (let’s call them Bellen and Bjulie lol) knew my bff as she came to visit often pre-COVID. About midway into COVID I had asked Bellen and Bjulie to stop talking to me as their lack of respect for the house and our safety wasn’t conducive to a safe living environment (also this was in the midst of BLM so they had sooooooo many invasive questions about my culture and that sort of thing that I felt UNCOMFORTABLE being in common spaces).
I told the one roommate that I liked, Bjesse, about my plan since they had never met said bff and I wanted them to meet so that they could feel comfortable with each other. I asked that Bjesse not tell Bellen and Bjulie because it would cause a lot of drama.
What does Bjesse do? Immediately tells Bellen and Bjulie who then snitch to our landlord who requires me to either sign a lease or gtfo. I asked my roommates whether they’d rather have a new roommate or be out $$$ until they could find a replacement. Those silly bitches chose the latter (my room was gigantic so everyone was vying for the space). So I got the fuck out a bit earlier than I had planned.
I then issued a chargeback with my bank for February’s rent and used the money to purchase a POD moving storage container to hold all of my things until I was ready to bring them to my new city.
It was shaping up to be a very merry Black History month indeed!
I spent the next few weeks with my sister and my niece – both are Pisces so I got to celebrate their birthdays which was a very lovely time for the most part (we’re sisters, so we also argue like crazy people lol).
During this time I set up the POD to be delivered to the new address, a day or two before I was set to arrive. Cue the day that the POD was supposed to be dropped off in front of the new place and by nightfall it is NOWHERE to be found.
I call and call and call until eventually they let me know that they delivered it… Just not to the right state.
At this point I no longer trust their enterprise so I ask them to ship it back and refund my money so I can just do it myself.
Big mistake, very big mistake.
Thus begins TWO WEEKS of me hauling my stuff in my 1993 Geo Metro. My car is too old to take the highway, so using surface roads the trip was nine hours one way so I would load up the car, drive nine hours, unload the car, spend a night or two getting drunk as Hell to forget, then drive the 9 hours back and start the process over again. After four or five of these trips I gave up, left my car and half of my stuff, and caught the next plane to my new home.
Although I am missing a lot of my possessions, as well as my kitty, I couldn’t be more relieved to be in a new place. The future was looking bright and I was excited for my new life to begin! Once I was a bit more settled I would make the journey back and collect the last of my things.
Everything was going well until about four days later we got a knock on the door. It was one of our neighbors letting us know that they had seen some strange men jump out of our car at 4 am and they wanted to make sure that they weren’t friends of ours.
We had no idea who they were, but upon inspection it was found that the only thing that was taken was a bottle of Chanel perfume and that they had left a pretty nice GPS, a flashlight, and their lock picking tool. It seemed that once they knew they had been found out they jumped out of the car in a hurry.
We sighed with relief that nothing more had happened and vowed to be more careful about parking the car in front of the house.
The morning two days after that incident we woke up to BOTH of our doors open and purses strewn about. They made off with a good amount of valuables, cash, my passport, and the car keys, but for some reason they didn’t take the car.
My roomie was leaving for Tampa in a few hours so we had to go into overtime: we called a tow company to pick up the car and take it to the dealership so they could re-wire the FOB to prevent the same people from coming back and robbing us AGAIN.
Before the car was towed we were going through the car to try to see if they had finished the job that they started a few days before. Imagine our surprise when instead of finding an empty car we found a bag of unidentified DRUGS. So I guess they robbed us, took the keys, and broke into our car to… have a safe place to do drugs?
I’m all for harm reduction or whatever, but that just seemed like too many steps.
It was a little bit scary to know that someone was in our home while we were SLEEPING, considering that we both sleep naked. It was made even scarier by the fact that I hadn’t gone to bed until 4:30am and my roomie was up by 8:00am! That’s 3 and a half hours for those of you reading this at home!!! Given the small window of opportunity we couldn’t help but feel like we were being watched. Perhaps the same people who were spotted in the car grabbed a piece of mail with our apartment number on it?? Perhaps it was two separate occurrences wholly unrelated to each other??
Given that there was no way to tell which was which it was hard to feel at ease, especially with my roomie going to Florida.
So that is the story of my nightmare move that has not even fully finished yet as I still have several more loads, a butt ton of plants, and a kitty to get from there to here.
Pray for me, y’all.