I'm
sitting here typing this blog post out in one of those rare moments in between
shifts at work and removing my belongings from the old apartment into the
house. Believe me, August is proving to
be one of those months from hell, and I am absolutely amazed that I am even
making time to write anything at all today.
Mind
you, this entry is going to be a short one, as I have a full schedule on my
plate. Let's put it this way. The hiatus is coming up very soon. Be warned.
You
know, it is so weird being in this place, seeing how different it looks as
opposed to how it looked a few months ago.
A few months ago, there were pictures hanging on the walls, the shelves
and closets were filled with random things, and you could walk through the
place without tripping over anything - except for the random size 12 sneaker
that I might have taken off in a half-asleep stupor.
Now
I look around and the walls are absolutely bare (except for the odd picture
hanger that I've been too lazy to remove), the shelves are empty, and there are
so many boxes on the floor that I almost have to crawl over top of them to get
to places. At least I have a couple of
days off coming up, so I hope to get the majority of the stuff shipped over to the
new place during that time.
After
all, I have until the end of August to get all the stuff out of there.
But
can anyone out there actually say that they love packing up to move? I hate moving!
(I
guess this explains why I spent eleven years in this place...eleven years of
horrible neighbours, police cars pulling into the driveway at least once a
week, and being woken up every morning at 6:25 like clockwork by people who
feel the need to honk their car horns at full blast because they can. I hated the idea of packing because it takes
too much work!)
But
you know, this move has been long overdue, and I decided that I didn't want to
put it off any longer. I needed to get
out of this shoebox of lies, and move on out.
Huh...Shoebox
of Lies. That was a great song by the
Barenaked Ladies. (And the inspiration
behind the title of this post!)
Anyway,
I'm really looking forward to getting out of this place. To be completely honest, I haven't really
enjoyed the experience all that much. I
mean, when I first moved into this place in July 2004, it was out of
desperation really. I was bouncing
around from job to job, and I didn't really have much of a future.
I
mean, don't get me wrong, I was grateful to live here, and it was fairly close
to the place that I would eventually call my workplace. But I've also come to the conclusion that
after eleven years of living in this shoebox of lies that I can't really handle
apartment living.
For
one, every single person in this apartment wants to know everything that you
are doing at every given moment of the day.
I mean, there's one lady who I basically refer to as the building's
security guard because she's always standing at the front doors, or she's
always looking out her window, or she's always opening up her door to eavesdrop
on conversations that people are having in the hallways.
And
lucky me, she happened to live right across the hallway. Did I win the lottery or what?
And
to make matters worse, she did a lot of things that a lot of other people in
the building would partake in.
This
is the very reason why I refer to this apartment building as a shoebox of lies.
I
know I'm throwing out an obscure reference to some of you...but my former
apartment building is a lot like the Final Fantasy VI town of Zozo. Now, whenever I played Final Fantasy VI, I
would always dread it. It's a city
landscape that happens to have thieves that will steal from you, punks who will
start up fights for no reason, and people who are absolutely incapable of
telling the truth.
Well,
looking back on it, I think I lived in one of Zozo's buildings. You try to talk to your neighbours, and you
never can tell whether what they are saying is the truth, or a big ball of
lies. Eventually, I gave up trying, and
just kept to myself. It made life a lot
less complicated that way.
I
can also probably count the number of times that neighbours picked fights with
each other on both my hands, my toes, and every hair on my head as well as the
hairs on the heads of everyone who lived in the building over the last eleven
years. Actually, maybe I can't. I don't know how to count that high. What number comes after a billion anyway?
Of
course, this isn't to really bash everybody that lived in my building. To be told, there were some good people who
lived there, and who continue to live there.
Jordan, Derek, Bobbie, Linda...and a few others who happened to have
come and gone over the years. It's
people like you that kept me sane over the last eleven years, and honestly, I
can't thank you enough for that.
But
I'm gonna be honest. I won't miss the
rest of you. In fact, I don't care if I
ever see any of you again. I have my
own life to live now, and at least with a house, I can pick and choose who I
want to invite into it. Sorry to say,
the more I got to know you, the less impressed I was. And now, I'm getting out of here while the rest of you can spend
the rest of your lives in this shoebox of lies. Enjoy the bed you chose to lie in. Like the Jeffersons, I'm movin' on up, and I've finally got a
piece of the pie.
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