I have never felt like this before.
Me: Mr. Wu I heard a rumor that our building was being destroyed soon. Do you know anything about that?
Mr. Wu: Yes. It's true.
Me: Really? When?
Mr. Wu: Two weeks.
Me: What?
Like trying to lift a greased bowling ball, like taking a dart to the small of your back, like watching the cage door you're climbing out of slam back in your face.
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Friends, there is one week between me and a plane heading west. There is one week, one hundred and thirty one exams to give and grade, endless cups of tea to be had, one pizza party to throw, one monk to visit, some gift shopping to do, maybe four loads of laundry, and now one apartment to pack up and and two apartments to move completely.
Overwhelmed? Stressed? No. My response is total brokenness... I can literally feel myself coming apart at the seams, sanity fraying, and if I make it to the end of the week it will be in pieces held together by the leftover packing tape.
There are boxes everywhere, dust has somehow multiplied, I stopped caring that the floor was dirty and as a result the filth factor immediately increased exponentially. I can't even just throw out some of the garbage because it's sensitive and so I will have to find some time to burn it somewhere. My plants can sense that their in for a prolonged journey to who knows where and have started to wilt under the tension. I have bacon bits in the freezer and sweet pickle relish in the fridge and only a desperate hope that the restaurant across the street can keep them for me while I'm gone this summer. Some stuff, like my Sinbad DVD, I like too much to put in a box that I may never see again so it'll just have to take a little unplanned trip across the world and back.
Because the truth is, the worst part about all of this is the coming back. It's always the coming back.
There isn't anywhere to come back to.
The boxes and furniture, we've been told, will be moved into a currently empty office. Possibly never to return. We will be moved into the rough equivalent of a low end Chinese hotel room, indefinitely, if we're lucky... because as of now we don't even have that. One thing that's already been set, however, is our maxed out teaching schedules. The same schedule I survived this term as escaping through the fire, despite all of our pleas for mercy.
I guess it's fortunate that I asked about the rumor. Or else we wouldn't even have the boxes to come back to.
Picture me with a white flag thrown up. I'm finished here.
It's all coming down.
