Be Brave Project, Day 34: Moving and Reflecting

Well, I've booked the movers: Even better, I've moved from the usual yen for stasis to a sort of brisk multi-tasking efficiency. Still hauling those boxes in. Called the cable company to make sure I could get cable/internet/phone installed within 24 hours of the move. I've started lists and lists--post office moving packets and voter registration + magazine, IRS, and banking related change of addresses and what furniture I'm giving away.

It's beginning to feel very, very real.

There's something really wonderful about how this all happened. I complain in an AA meeting about being yanked around by my landlords and feeling like "the Universe's bitch." At that time I was, as usual, upset about my mother's advanced cirrhosis and her continuation to drink. I was filled with sorrow and disappointment at my father's latest threat of violence in July. (My brothers and I threw him a birthday party at his request, and he declared that the "execution sucked" and that we had been disrespectful to him and his wife: then he threatened to "beat the shit" out of my older brother, whose own children weren't 6 feet away. A decade of good behavior was thereby erased, and a lonely old age guaranteed. Very sad.)

So I was reeling, towards the end of the summer when I received the lease offer from my landlords. The offer that would raise my rent by a total of 66% in three years--in this economic climate! And I was resentful at all of the bullshit I was supposed to say smelled of Chanel. I'd been trained to ignore ugly realities and to keep my mouth shut in regards to the family inheritance of lunacy--so I went to an AA meeting and bitched simply for the relief of having people come up to me and confirm. "Yes, that's insane behavior. No, you don't need to cover it up or compensate for it."

I listened to them, and also followed the Be Brave Project: I wrote the landlords a scorching letter that resulted in them reducing the proposed rent increase by hundreds per month. . .

But then, via AA, the offer on this new place came in--a duplex with a dishwasher, within one block of Central Park. And now I feel grateful & like the luckiest person in the City.

Re. the BBP: Today I send in my voter's registration form--with the new address on it! I haven't voted in a long, long time. And I doubt that my vote will make a big difference--but dammit I'm doing it: This country is like another crazy ass parent to me right now; producing a lot of worry and shame. Yesterday sent in 2006 taxes, and today will return my older brother's call about the family situation. This is the stuff that used to send me to the sofa with a vase of Pinot Grigiot, but instead tonight I will be making these, and pouring milk into the vase to accompany them.

Today to library to work on plotting.

Yesterday sent an essay to Marie Claire.