You’re Leaving Tomorrow? Let’s Grab Drinks!

It is July 29 2016, 6:30 AM. My mom is staying with me and I’ve woken up to the sound of her freaking out about our UHAUL truck. It was parked on the side street of my apartment building, directly below my window, in our view. She’s looking out and sees no other cars, gasping at the fact that practically all of my belongings are now probably in the hands of homeless man who figured out how to hotwire the UHAUL. Startled, I obviously freak out a little too. Sure, I’m not taking those things with me, but I still need that really cool pouf thing that I bought at Target last year.

Panicked, we both look out the window, only to see the truck still parked in the same place, untouched by gypsy thieves (or any other kind of thieves, I suppose). I can’t go back to sleep thinking about everything, so I walk to grab coffee for us.

It’s the day before I leave the country for an entire year, and I’ve got a calligraphy project that needs to go to press; I’ve also got to figure out which two envelopes out of 190 that I somehow misplaced and need to redo before I ship those out. My Internet box is still in tact, which also needs to be shipped. These inanimate objects have bigger travel plans than I do on this particular day. I realize that I have a prescription to pick up before 6 PM, and I also need to drop off some things at my old full-time job that I forgot to give back (though I wouldn’t have minded keeping that AMEX). My apartment still has half the shit that I started out with in it, and we’ve got to move about ten more boxes, a mattress, a box spring, and that last box that everyone has at the end of moving when you realize that you’d rather throw it all in something labeled “Misc” than think about organizing the remnants of your junk drawers.

Text Message, July 29, 2:40 PM

“We still never got drinks!! <3 Do you have dinner plans?!”

“YAS bitch, I DO.”

Okay, I didn’t say that. But really? I applied for this program in June of 2015. It’s July of 2016. And although I didn’t know I was going until recently, I gave a month’s notice of my departure. It’s the day before I’m leaving and I haven’t eaten all day, I’m moving everything I own into a truck, I’ve got freelance projects that I still haven’t finished, medicines I haven’t picked up, family that hasn’t even arrived to say goodbye yet, and you want to get DRINKS HEART EMOJI? Sorry, not sorry: no. It’s kind of incredible how people flock when they somehow realize that you won’t be convenient for an entire year. But it only made me appreciate the people who I actually have hung out with very frequently. Not to say that I don’t have friends that I only see rarely, which is completely fine, but this is a little bit of a different situation.

On the contrary, I do appreciate the effort. It’s small, but at least they said something. And yes, when I’m back in a year (or wherever I am), YASSSSS BITCH, I would never turn down drinks. (Hey, at least they know what I like.)