I go through the boxes one more time, wondering why I'm not just taking everything out of the boxes but my mind almost collapses at the thought of everything being all over the floor, so I just keep searching through the three boxes and not finding what I'm looking for, again. I've done this four times now and I try convincing myself it's just not in there, but I can't figure out how that's possible. I packed all of this myself, everything was in alphabetical and categorical order when I put it in there and there's Adorno in Theory and then there's Benjamin but no Barthes. I start doubting myself, thinking well maybe I put the Frankfurt School together but then there's Derrida a few books down and Durkheim too, so there's even social theory mixed in here so I know it should be right there. But it's not, and I'm not sure what that means.
If it's not here, and I packed this myself and it should be in that spot right there, then only a few things could have happened: either I packed and along the way someone opened the box, took the Barthes out and resealed the box, or somehow the books were spatially displaced and replaced by a temporal counterpart. Reflecting on it, option two seems to be the only possible answer, because the box is packed as tightly as possible, so if something had been removed it would have been noticeable. So now I have a new problem and I have to figure out which four books have replaced my Barthes stuff, but then I realize that there's no way to know if it was four books or one book that was spatially equivalent to the four Barthes books and then I think that I can barely keep track of what books I know I own anyway so how am I ever going to track down something I can't be sure whether I own or not? I start thinking about all of the times I run across stuff that I forgot I own, then have the realization that what if all of those times they had been things that were just spatially displaced, and all of the times I thought I had lost something it had just kind of traded places with something else? And how could I ever track down all of that now? This could have been happening for years and years and I just never realized it, and not just with books but with movies and CDs and pictures and all sorts of other things that I just think I lose all of the time or things I think that I buy without keeping track when really they're just trading themselves in and out of my life? All of the sudden this doesn't seem very fair and I'm starting to wonder if maybe it's not the books and the CDs and the movies and stuff that's trading places but what if it's me and I'm just hoping between realities, going between one where I own these books and CDs and then another where I own those movies and have taken those photos and my head is kind of spinning and I decide to sit down.
So now it's time to really start considering what this means: if I'm hopping between realities all of the time, how many am I going through, and how many of me are there? Because whenever I leave, someone has to take my place, and I would guess they're just as clueless as me. All of these times when I just barely didn't hear what someone said, when it seemed like I lost my place in a conversation, when my thoughts seemed all jumbled and out of place, it's kind of making sense now and I start going over every time that I can remember when this makes sense. I keep remembering just one moment, when I'm staring at Shelly and I know she looks different and I can't get back into the conversation because it just doesn't make sense to me anymore, then she asks if I'm paying attention and why I'm looking at her funny and it's really hard for me to give her an answer because I'm just shaken up now. And I remember she went to bed kind of angry that night and that night was the beginning of the end, before the real fights and the lying and the broken TV, that night, that moment was when everything changed, and maybe I just jumped into a relationship with a different Shelly, but then why have I never jumped back to her? I keep running into these problems, how I would have to notice major changes so maybe there aren't any major changes but if there aren't major changes then what's the point? But maybe I just immediately forget the other life but then why do I remember what books I had? I'm starting to realize this is too much for me right, especially in my current state, so I take half a Valium and lay down.
