Pieces. Pick and choose.
I hate packing.
It means you have to sift through all the things you own and pick out the things that’ll fit in your luggage, the things you can’t live without. And I always put packing off until the last minute, so that means I leave a LOT of things behind.
So. Stuff I wish I brought, but had to leave behind in the Philippines:
- Most of my CD collection. I have all my EBTG , but I’m sad I’ve left all the Suzanne Vegas and most of the new wave ones. Oh ok, I did bring my MP3 library, but it’s not the same.
- There’s this cruddy little blue soap dish that I bought on my first week in the dorm when I was a twelve-year-old high school freshman. First time away from home, first time on my own. I’ve kept that soap dish around for nearly nineteen years. They’ve probably thrown it out by now.
- My collection of science-fiction paperbacks. There’s hundreds of them, I think. All I brought along was Harry Harrison’s Galactic Dreams. I wish I’d brought the Pratchetts, or the Nivens. But no, nothing else was gonna fit. Probably going to cost a fortune to have them shipped over, too.
- Half my VCD collection. Oh, well, I think I brought the good half, at least. I think I left behind two seasons of Dead Like Me and three of Farscape.
My computer. No way they’re letting me pack a 17" crt. The video card’s crapping out anyway. But I still miss the stupid thing. This is the longest I’ve gone without my own personal computer in oh, fifteen, sixteen years? Damn. - My cats. Yes, I miss the stupid things. The way they’d quietly tag along behind me when I can’t sleep and I take a walk around the house at three AM. The way they always meet me at the gate when I come home late at night and walk me up to my room. Some people say our house is haunted, but all the eighteen years I’ve lived there, I’d never seen a ghost. I blame the cats.
- All the junk I’d collected over the years. Comic books. RPG modules. Bullet casings from 1987. Stones from various beaches. Two drawers full of old electronics. My first motherboard, with the NEC V20 processor. ISA cards. I’m such a pack rat, I never throw anything away.
Ah well. They’re just things. Objects I can someday toss into a box and carry over here. Leaving them behind doesn’t mean much.
Leaving people behind, that’s far worse. All the fun you’re not having, you’ll never have, because you’re not there with them right now. Being unable to share their grief, their sadness. Not being able to be there for them when they need you.
Those are the pieces you can’t pack.
