As I sat in my studio apartment for the very last night, I was overwhelmed with emotion. As ecstatic as I was for bedroom walls, a dishwasher, and a fireplace, there was a tinge of sadness. That was the apartment where I feel like I finally became an adult. I overcame my fear of living alone. Living alone doesn’t have to mean you are lonely. For three years that shoebox of an apartment became my sanctuary from the shitty days at work, the heartbreaks, and the missteps. I accepted jobs sitting in that room. I kissed boys who I thought were right, and ones I knew were wrong in that room. There were plenty of single girl Saturdays, wine nights, visits from friends that all took place in that small little room. Those 500 square feet made up my home; they brought me into adulthood.
Now, weeks later, I sit in my new home that doesn’t quite feel mine yet, even though there are touches of me everywhere. I am still figuring out where things should go and finding a routine. This is a real adult apartment, with color on the walls, and more than one room. It makes my tiny studio feel like it was a dorm room pretending to be an adult apartment. I look around my new living room and think of all the things that will happen in this room. What big life moments will this apartment witness? How many times will my life change inside these walls?
It frightens me a little to think that this is the place where I will finish out my 20s. As my 29th birthday slowly approaches I am having to reconcile the fact that some of my dreams for my 20s won’t come true. It is hard to believe that I was the 20 year-old who dreamed of being 30, and now I dread it. I said goodbye to the life plan I made in college at 25, but now I am having to accept that my hopes I made at 25 or 26 are now slipping away. I accept the wins I have achieved. I celebrate every raise, every time I do something fun that married friends couldn’t do with the same ease. I am celebrating this apartment, but a little part of me knows that this is another home for one. A space with no room for anyone else. I fill up every nook and cranny. I can’t visualize anyone else in the space with me. Does that mean I have resolved to be alone? Does that scare me or am I accepting my mother’s opinion that I have become too hard to share my life with someone else?
I know I am supposed to be so happy sitting in this living room full of pretty new things, but part of me just sees what this place isn’t. It is an adult’s home, not that of someone who does wild spontaneous things, but not that of someone with the responsibility of sharing their life with another human. It is a home of someone somewhere in between. Maybe I need to fill it with my friends for it finally feel like home, for me to feel the joy I am supposed to feel, to remind me of how full my life is.
