The Great Exodus, Part I

It has been exactly one month and one day since my last explosive over share and the cruel crazy beginning my very own March Madness tournament. I truly thought that I could continue writing and posting and reading and Facebooking and sharing throughout our move out of Hollywood but shit shingles, was I terribly wrong. People warned me. Websites mocked me. Boxes slapped me but still I thought that the big Beverly-Sweetzer jailbreak would be as smooth as Blue Ivy’s ass after the seventh nanny’s Moroccan Oil application.

Nope. I got creamed, crushed, stepped on and stampeded by what can only be described as the most epic uprooting of a lifetime. Lopsided purchases and lame mementos burst threw every box with unnecessary junk and mind-melting papers spitting in my face hour after hour. As packing begun every corner of the old apartment screamed at me with fuzzy bunnies and crappy cable cords. The paint chips chirped. The cracked walls cackled and the outdated clothes shit in my toilet and didn’t even flush. A week before the big moving day I packed and cleaned and threw things out. I swept and organized and told myself that I was way ahead of the game of life, that we had made the most awesome of choices in less than seven days and could handle a quick exit like the Navy Seals on a Pakistan Monday. The requisite garage sale happened on my front lawn and I made $320 on a collection of unimpressive vintage handbags, nasty sneakers, torn paperbacks and a mound of embarrassing 2004 Citizens of Humanity Jeans no self-respecting crack tranny would be caught dead sucking dick in.

But when the movers arrived to pack us up they carefully, methodically and far too quickly threw twenty years of Hollywood living and loving into cardboard coffins in less than four hours. Really? My adventures in failures and flops, parties and pretending, snot-crying and spit-laughing, joke-writing and word-playing, procreating and pontificating took less than a banker’s half-day to toss and tape up?

Somehow the serious anxiety began when the last box was closed and the cupboards sat empty. If I wanted toast I couldn’t have it. If I felt like homemade pasta I could just fuck off. All the creature comforts were in little sealed prisons while my head spun in different directions looking for answers to all my questions about our future home and drastic redo. The echo of that emptiness and the warbled sounds of all those years and memories being reduced to a simple thud of a box being stacked shook me to my core. And sleeping on a mattress on the last night in the room where I got pregnant, in the apartment where I got engaged, the pad where I was married, in the home my family made out of odd jobs and random paychecks could not permeate the shell of denial mixed with adrenaline that I put up like a white picket fence around seriously soggy feelings.

In other words, luck would have it that the speed in which we made the decision to leave and the amount of distractions buried any real emotions I may have been feeling. And for that I am truly grateful. I mean, seriously. Who the hell has time to boo-hoo and question when three major writing projects are barking at your husband and a string of root canal appointments lodge themselves into the back of your miserable mouth? How about I mention a myriad of doctor’s appointments to try and solve the mystery of my painful and pathetic running injury while I unpack shit I never really liked into a house I kind of worship? How could I possibly be emotional about leaving the neighborhood that formed my entire social circle since 1992 while I was too busy looking for any pair of jeans, a wash cloth, the expired Vicodin and my favorite pair or period underwear? I cannot possibly leave out the thread-bare, nasty-ass t-shirt I use every night as sleep mask, a cotton blinder if you will that always kept out not only the deceptively blinding Hollywood sun but the horrific emotional sound of leaf-blowers and the men who love them. Oh, wait. I need to mention the new, longish commute, tee-ball practice an hour away, Passover celebrations three freeways farther than before and Easter egg hunts in the hills of the other half with a peppering of a two-week spring break for the only Pre-K member of the household in which a mother may or may not feel that her small, wonderful and very loud child has moved, not only into a new home, but into her back pocket and down her throat.

The feelings of shock, denial, exultation and happiness over the last few weeks are all over me like a white, wet t-shirt at a spring break titty contest. Sometimes I look down and love what I see and other times I want to scream and put on a dumpy sweatshirt and hide under a rock. People tell me to slow down and enjoy the experience of unpacking, nesting, finding love for the old and embracing the new. Others say it will only get better but will suck pole for at least three months. Either way I know I have to walk through the changes and challenges of a move twenty years in the making. I only wish my leg was all better and I had a few days of quiet to write, unpack, find my shoes, grieve and open-mouth kiss my new big backyard.