The beginning of everything else

Tetris and Tantrums

My apartment looks like a tornado has just come through it, I'm pretty pleased with the amount I've managed to box up, but what isn't in boxes seems to be spread across every available floor space and surface. I've only lived here for 2 years, but it is staggering just how much I've managed to collect over that time. I had started off thinking that I would go for the good old method of pitch and keep piles, but soon gave up on that idea whilst Noah teased me over Skype that if I'm not careful I'll end up on the news - 'California Woman found trapped under piles of newspapers in her own house'.

December has just started, and I can't believe how quickly the ending of this year has changed from what I had expected. At the start of October I had followed the same ritual as the last 6 Octobers. Waking up and seeing that it was October 5th, opening my phone and typing out a Happy Birthday text, trying to convince myself that this would be the year that I was brave enough to send it. That message would stay in draft all day, with me going back to it every now and then, trying to psych myself up to just press the button, and then at my lowest point of every year, deleting it the following morning.

2 months later, I'm packing my apartment to move in with him. We'll move my things this weekend when Noah arrives, our new bed and office furniture arrive during the week, and then next weekend he'll get on a plane on Saturday morning and come home forever. 

It has been interesting telling people and seeing their reactions. Our family and friends have been very supportive, some have checked if we are sure, but I have never felt any judgment - just people who care about us checking in and taking an interest. It's the people on the periphery that have been the most entertaining, they tend to sit in two camps of thought on the subject.

 The first group are those who laugh and tell me that they too would lock a man that beautiful down. It might annoy me a little if it weren't for the fact that I know I don't need to do that. The second group however rush to tell me that we are moving too fast, that we are surely headed for destruction, but no matter which way you spin it, I always come back to the same conclusion. I know the man that I love, we might have matured, there might be new facets to our older selves, but at his core he's still Noah - the boy a grew up with, the teenager that I fell for, and the man that I have never been able to forget. It doesn't matter whether we do this today, next month or next year, as long as there is breath left in my body, I'll always want to pick him.

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Coffee has been drunk and muffins have been eaten by the time we assemble in the parking lot of what is soon to be my old apartment. It's far too early to even be awake on a Saturday, yet here I am along with Noah, Lee, Rachel, Liam, and Jyoti staring at the truck that Noah has rented. He's telling us his plan, in the same way I would imagine he's given hundreds of team talks in locker rooms across the country. He wants big square furniture first, then all of the boxes, followed by anything else that's an odd shape, packed in bags, or light like cushions, brooms, mops, buckets and pillows.

Noah, Lee and Liam are lugging the heavy things about, I'm sure could do that if I tried, but when Noah picks up a full set of draws - by himself - like it's made of feathers, I come to the conclusion that it's pointless trying to compete with Noah's muscles. And speaking of those muscles, I had taken many opportunities to watch him sweating,  shirtless, muscles straining, and skin glistening. It took me back to my school days sitting in the bleachers pretending to do homework as cover for my real mission of watching him running about playing football. 

As the morning wore on though I could see him tiring, a lot of the furniture had been assembled once I got it inside my apartment, and so it was taking a long time to maneuver the now cumbersome items inch by inch around difficult corners. He'd trapped his fingers between a wall and a bookcase, he had scraped his side on a door handle when he was moving the bed, and more than once Liam or Lee's hands had slipped and dropped the full weight of something like the couch right onto his shoulders.