This week I am moving all of my things out of S’s house and my other recent home, EH, into a storage unit. Then having achieved Bay Arean homelessness, I am going to Europe. First I’ll visit FHI and other nice things in Oxford. Then I’ll cruise around the Norwegian Fjords with S. Then I’ll meet up with my mother, my other relative who shall not be specified because they assiduously avoid having any online presence (let’s call them V) and my friend and employee, T, and we’ll voyage back toward Oxford for an epic family-holiday-scandivanian-midsummer-celebration-work-retreat. Then I might hang out in Oxford some more before heading to a conference in Sweden.
There are several problems with moving all of my things into storage.
One problem is hard to explain, but I can describe its symptoms. I go over to S’s place when he is at work, all psyched up to move my things. Then I go into my room. Then I look at my things. Then I look at my things. Then I look at my things. Then I feel kind of weak and sick and confused. Then I go to the bathroom to think. Then come back. Then I look at my things. Somehow this eventually got at least half resolved, but I still feel surprisingly thrown by considering the task.
My friend pointed out that if you are moving, you are supposed to invite your friends—though preferably not him—to help you. And then they can give you moral support and move things and joyfully eat the pizza you give them, and stuff like that. I feel like I have tried this though, and it just distracts me from staring ineffectually at my things.
Also it interacts badly with the second problem, which is that I am always worried that some fraction of my things are somehow contaminated with something, and need to be cleaned or thrown out or generally fretted over. (This is not helped by the fact that in the past, when various things seemed somehow contaminated, I apparently put them in boxes, labeled them ‘worrying because …’ and then shoved them in my wardrobe. But it isn’t just that—if you can’t remember what happened with some objects in the past, then can you be that sure that you didn’t get something dangerous on them? I mean, for any particular thing that might be on them—a highly effective neurotoxin for instance—it sounds pretty unlikely. But there are so many things, and so much uncertainty… Which is to say, sometimes my OCD can get a bit out of hand in these situations.)
The problem with introducing a friend to an area where something may be contaminated is that half the time they will try to help by rapidly spreading the contaminated item everywhere, or eating it or something. It is as if they don’t have a system of implicit norms designed to maintain a guarantee that dirty things will not ever touch clean things. And then I will respond pretty much as you’d expect a crazy person to, and it will cause tension.
So, much looking at things to be done.