The last time I published a blog, prior to the Sunday post, was in September of 2011.

I was a different person in a different place. I was single. I had a fantastic apartment. It was a one bedroom with wood floors and windows on three sides and one shared wall. It was ideal. It was at the back of the complex above the garages, with no one to complain about dancing feet or dropping shoes.

I had a slimmer of an ocean view, the Long Beach Harbor. I loved it there. I watched four sets of neighbors move in, and three of the four get pregnant. I was waiting for the last couple to get babied but they never did by the time I moved out.

A year later, September 2012, I was moving out. I was leaving my beloved Long Beach. I had met someone in the most unlikely way, via a game of words on our iPhones. My life was changing again.

As I watched the movers pack up all my precious things, I could not believe how MANY so-called precious things I had. When I saw the truck pull up that would hold all the boxes with all the stuff, I could not imagine that my ‘stuff’ would FILL that truck. But all my stuff reached the end of this big trailer with room enough for the door to slide down. I was embarrassed How does one person have boxes of things she cannot begin to count?

When the truck arrived at my new place in Santa Barbara, the second bedroom was filled floor to ceiling with boxes. I didn’t know how to process all of it. What was it? Where did it come from? How did I manage to keep it for so long? Was I crazy?

I moved in September. Those boxes stayed in that room for six months. My boyfriend move in that January. I moved the boxes to a storage unit. Six months later, I moved them out of the storage unit back home and rifled through everything.

Somehow I have to figure out how I did that.