Are There Any Sadder Words

...than I packed the stereo?

Okay, I know there are. But seriously, the stereo being unhooked is the moment at which I realize just how far things have gone.

Of course, there's lots happening here. The roommate is also moving, and this has caused a sort of apartment version of Risk. First, I took the living room for storage. Then he struck back. Now I have retreated to my bedroom, where I am marshaling my forces in the form of cardboard boxes. It's like when I built forts when I was a kid, only now, the walls are all my belongings - particularly books. We're in a holding pattern now, though this morning while he was away, I began to sift through the Tupperware drawer in the kitchen - one of the few places where our things have co-mingled.

I expect shots will be fired come dinner time.

The process has been harder than any other move, or so it seems to me from the midst of it. Having everything so packed around me at night has begun to give me odd dreams. It's tough to even be in my room because it reminds me of the clutter of my parents' house, and I'm finding myself claustrophobic in the room that used to be a sort of sanctuary. Lying on my bed to take a phone call is almost panic inducing, and I find that I'm having a hard time focusing on conversations or saying much of anything even when I am.

I narrowly headed off a visit from my parents, who claim to now - after four years of me living here - have an interest in seeing the Great Attraction of the Area.

And yesterday, I had coffee with one of my best students, who is thinking about graduate school but who is trying to work with my most absent minded of soon-to-be-former colleagues. While I probably don't have to be as delicate in suggesting that they, as an undergrad, are going to have to learn that most useful rule of graduate students - that committees are things to be managed and carefully fed information - it wasn't an easy thing to explain that what matters is a finished Senior thesis as much as the masterful work my colleague is threatening to make them conjure from thin air.

So it's back to packing and the odd little almost-panic attacks that come every time I step in my room. More to follow.