Thwarting Yourself

Lately, I think I have been taking on tasks specifically because I know I will not be able to do them.

For the past half hour I have been trying to move a dresser. I want to move this dresser out of my room so I can twirl my bed around, allowing it to hug a corner of my bedroom. This dresser is immovable. It's the Iron Curtain. It's me when I see a shoe sale. It's my father's stance on extraterrestrial life (aliens exist apparently). I stare at it now, with hatred. It and it's stupid light wood, drawers askew. I try to push it and it grabs onto the carpet, stubborn as a mule and just as heavy. I lay half of my body down to its surface, the corners making sharp contact with my hipbones, and cry.

My dresser relocation is part of the Master Plan to revamp my childhood bedroom. My bedroom makes me uncomfortable. It's such a picture of a frozen transition; platform heels stacked next to seventh grade basketball trophies, pictures of me on St Patrick's Day smashed in college stare at a framed collage of me receiving First Communion. It is my stubborn girlhood refusing to give way to new, employed me. The tenets of adolescence cling to me like a spider web, and when I stumble home after a night out, hair mussed, drunk from the bar, I fight my room."I'm AN ADULT," my drunk self says.

"Ha," says my room. "In your 22 year old dreams. Why don't you cozy up to your giant stuffed bear and call it a night, eh? By the way, you've had these sheets since middle school."

Today I sat on my bed and checked my email, hoping for employer's enthusiastic responses to my scanty resume. I looked up at my desk, my suitcases still overflowing from still packed college goods, my high school diploma, volleyball plaques, a stuffed dog I named Patches one Christmas, and suddenly all the objects took on a pulse. Their motion grew; the simple notion that they could move at all mocked my existence, my resume, my attempts at dressing like an adult . I snapped, threw all my clothes out of the dresser, and heaved it away from the wall with all my adult, womanly strength.

About a foot later, here I am.

On my blog.

Talking about how Patches came to life.

I have realized that there is no way will I be able to move this dresser by myself. Or my bed frame for that matter. They are both too heavy. I am going to ask my father to come over after work and help me move the elephants in the room.

I think part of being an adult is to recognize when you need help, and instead of thinking you have the upper body strength of a young Arnold, ask for it. Perhaps if I can swallow my girlhood bravado and pride for a second, the woman in me can make a brief appearance. Well, at least long enough to move a dresser and a bed.