Unit #331: A Love Story About My Apartment

“I'm not doing it," I said.

“You don't have to," My life coach had said, "but you should. It's what you need."

“No," I said, righteously, "I'm not moving into my own apartment. I don't need to. If I do, I'll just stay inside all of the time. I won't do anything, I won't, I won't, I won't." My face was burning up, I knew what was best for me. So why was I trying so hard to prove my point? I couldn’t find a hole big enough to hide in, as though this decision and this choice was too big for me to survive.

I had worked so hard, so very hard to feel safe. I had worked so hard to be OK with where I was. In a platonic-romantic relationship, together because I needed to feel safe and he needed to stay sober. Rarely touching, and, if we did, wishing it was over as soon as it started. And after it all, after five years, I was losing all of it. My faux happiness, my faux dreams, the faux way I wrote about him.

I wanted a romance, a life, that was bigger than the one I actually had, but I was too afraid of letting myself have something real. Of being seen. Of feeling so much for someone or something.

“I don’t have enough money for lunch." I was sitting on the couch of the house I was renting in college. I paid, in total, $300 for four months thanks to a very good friend who had begged his landlord to cut me some slack.

“I told him you were basically living on the street,” he told me over the phone.

I laughed as I glanced behind me at the motel room my parents were living in at the time, “I guess I should use this to my advantage.”

That semester, sitting on the couch I’d once used as a bed when I had nowhere else to go, I’d told that same friend, "I don't have money for lunch.” I could feel a smile creep into my face, not because I was happy about it but because I'd come to terms with this being my life. I had been hiding money behind a picture on my wall for quite some time; I was afraid if I put it into a bank account something would happen and I wouldn't have anything. “But I’m starting this tutoring job soon and should be good in a few weeks.”

And I worked every hour I didn’t have classes, getting to campus early and staying until late into the night, falling asleep once in one of the desk-chairs the student-athletes used.

I spent years being angry with strangers on campus for seemingly having a better time than me (who knows how many others quietly suffered alongside me), and I didn't want to go back to that life, I didn't want to live afraid. And living in my own apartment was the epitome of the hole my fear bubbled up from. I wasn’t even sure I could afford my own apartment; I’d never even had a bill in my own name.

“I want to live with him," I had said in my life coach’s living room. But saying it didn't make it true, and when my ex and I decided to give it another try, the world felt like it had tipped to the left.

"I think," he said, "I owe this a shot since we've invested so much time in this."

And that didn't feel like a great love to me. To me, it felt like smashing your teeth together.

“I went to look at an apartment," I was lying back on my bed, rubbing my fingers against my temple.

“And what did you think?" my life coach had asked.

"I think," I said, my chest filling with half a breath, "I can see myself there."

"It seems like you know what you need to do."

"If I leave," I said, "I'm not going to want him in my life anymore."

"I know," she said. “Because it will finally be your life.”

The world tipped back upright.

Some months later I was sitting in this awful, fuzzy chair across from a leasing manager as she handed me a beach bag full of apartment keys and key-fobs and some sort of bands I was supposed to wear when I went to the pool but never did. Go to the pool, that is.

But I had the best view of it for a little over two years.

“I think you're going to love living here," she said as she unlocked my door for the first time to let me in.

I walked through the threshold. Empty. It was completely empty, and it felt like I'd never be able to fill it up.

How will I ever make this mine, I thought. I stayed awake until 3 AM the first night, putting my canopy bed together while every sound bounced off the walls. Sweating through my leggings, wondering why I had been passed down this OCD and anxiety from my father. I didn't know why I'd picked this bed, but I'd always wanted one so I bought it.

I bought it for me. It was enough.

“I feel so alone," I said on the phone to my mom, tossing my leg over the reading chair in my room, "I never feel this way. I love my alone time, but I feel alone.

“I went through the same thing," she’d said, "I remember telling your grandmother that I had no friends. But watch out. Because one day soon you'll have too many friends to spend time with."

And she was right. After months of feeling free and being open and vulnerable, I started to have too many friends to spend time with. I loved coming home, watching Stranger Things, making popcorn, and snuggling with my dog, Tanner. At some point, I strung lights across my balcony railing to read under.

I lit candles in this apartment. Burned sage. Cried for nights on end. Had so many great friends over, and got dressed up for some of the strangest dates of my life. Applied for dozens of jobs, and started a new one. Slept-in with Tanner, and cut my hair. Learned how to cook a 10/10 ragù. Laughed more than I’ve ever laughed in my life.

Learned how to love myself and made love for the first time with my soulmate in this apartment.

And made a lot more love.

Found a love and a life that is bigger than anything I’ve ever had before.

So, saying goodbye to this apartment, my apartment, has been so much harder than I ever thought it would be as I start this journey of moving out. It's the first place that has ever truly been mine, where I could have as many books stacked against the walls and clothes toppling over in the laundry room as I wanted.

But somehow I did it.

I emptied all of the love I had left into this home, and it filled me right back up.