A journey into a warzone of a different kind

Daniel Bitonti

It was getting harder to breath.

Every so often I could hear the moans of my partner, cries of exhaustion and frustration. But I couldn’t focus on him, as sympathy would only weaken me. This was no situation for the faint of hearts.

My legs were now giving up on me, my soul, like his, also steadily weakening.  But I marched on. We marched on.  No training or piece advice could have prepared us for this. This was our reality, where strength of character and will alone would decide whether we were going to make it through. 

After hours of silence, my partner finally turned to me, his bloodshot eyes showing near total defeat. His voice was worn out from the toxic fumes we had been breathing in all day.  He spoke: “Why are you going to throw that corn out,” he said to me, as I hovered over the garbage with a bag of frozen corn in my hand.  “It hasn’t even been opened, the next tenants can use it.”

Moving out sucks, real hard. And while I certainly painted you a picture of war in an attempt to keep you reading, anyone who has moved knows that it might be the closest thing that non-military, non-combat folks will ever see to a war zone.

For us, it was a unique scenario: we had only been in the place for a year, but it was the first time in several that the landlord was coming up to see the place (the apartment had been passed on from group of friends to group of friends without the landlord inspecting in between moves) We were both moving back home, so in short, we had four years of “stuff” to get rid of.

After 40 hours of work and a really sore back, I searched for a lesson. I’m telling you, after going dizzy from breathing in the near-lethal fumes of old sauces and marinades I poured down the sink – everything from chipotle to teriyaki, from plum to strawberry – and scrubbing an undetermined black, sticky liquid out of the bottom of a fridge, I needed a profound lesson.

Moving out is a lesson in the mindless accumulation of material goods that our capitalist society encourages. The countless bottles of sauces we dumped, the three bags of clothes I got rid of, trip after trip to Value Village, and the ten bags of garbage we illegally dumped was a reminder of rampant materialism and overconsumption.

This wasn’t working for me.

Okay, moving is a lesson in human perseverance. We had all the odds against us: we only had two days to get out, and the place was huge. But we pounded through the night, scrubbing with passion and fury.  We held each other up. We got through it.

Nope.

I came out more bitter, and I don’t think I’ve become stronger. In fact, I’m weaker, sauce-shocked and never wanting to move again.

A lesson in spatial awareness, increasing one’s ability to maneuver heavy objects in tight spaces? Not the kind of lesson I was looking for.

There was no personal lesson in the move. But when telling my story, I noticed an unparalleled sympathy in others, and an unbridled enthusiasm in them to tell their own moving horror stories.

Moving brings the world closer together in a shared hatred. Regardless of race, class, age, gender or culture, everyone hates moving. When President Obama meets Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, certainly there will be not bonding over their shared hatred for Israel, but moving yes. At diplomatic meetings, opening up with a conversation on how shitty moving is will not only break the ice but also reveal an universal connection that world leaders won’t be able to deny.

I told you, I really needed a lesson in all of this.