Why I Haven't Unpacked My Fucking Suitcase

It’s been over two weeks since I came back from Winter Break. Two weeks is long enough complete the hazing tradition known as sorority recruitment and for the question of “So what did you do over Winter Break?” to finally go stale, but apparently it’s not long enough for me to unpack my fucking suitcase.

Here’s the thing: It’s not like my suitcase is all that large, or I’m all that busy. Literally, the whole unpacking operation would probably be a five minute job, and for every moment I’ve been busy prepping for midterms or (more probably) eating wings, I have had at least another ten moments of extreme, tear-inducing boredom where I repeatedly ask my roommate “What should I doooooooooooooo?” in that whiny voice that she loves.

Does it occur to me in these moments that I could unpack my suitcase? Perhaps in some highly repressed area of my mind where the entirety of my memories from middle school are kept, yes. In any case, the thought is never translated into action, so for the past two weeks, in order to get into or get out of my bed, I have had to carefully step over this stupid suitcase. For the most part, I’ve adapted to this extra bit of gymnastics added to my daily routine. I’ve even become so accustomed to the suitcase’s presence that I mostly avoid stubbing my toe against it in the dark.

If we met on the street today and engaged one another in a conversation, at some point I would probably brag about how I still haven’t unpacked from Winter Break (this is assuming I overcome my crippling social anxiety, of course). What started as pure sloth evolved into something much greater; simply not unpacking my suitcase because I procrastinate on everything became, “I wonder how long I can go without unpacking this suitcase,” a feat I am actually ostensibly proud about.

The way I see it, there are two possible truths as to why my suitcase remains unpacked: The first option is that I am heinously lazy, and not in a “Oh, haha, Felicity is so lazy and messy, she’s just a free spirit, a total Jessa,” kind of way, but in a “She’s gonna end up on Hoarders if she doesn’t smother herself in her own filth” kind of way.

OR, this suitcase is my white whale. Like the white whale, the meaning of the suitcase and why I continue to leave it unpacked is enigmatic. The suitcase is everything from a challenge, to a memory, to a badge of honor, to a bildungsroman, to a dénouement, to a whatever other literary terms you remember from AP English. My suitcase has come to represent some great metaphor in my life not because there is any inherent or easily accessible metaphor there, but because at this point, it absolutely has to, for my own sanity. Like Melville 500 pages into writing a book that includes an entire fucking chapter on whale anatomy, there has to be some greater meaning. So I choose to believe that my suitcase is metaphor, because like the white whale, it’s something I don’t completely understand. And it’s full of sperm.