Saying Goodbye.
I know it's just an apartment. It's just walls and crappy fake hardwood floors. Insulation and plumbing. It's a structure, walls roof and doors.
But for three years it's been mine.
For three years, I have lived here in my apartment. I got engaged within it, hosted my first big family Thanksgiving. I know I will have the memories, but breaking up with my apartment to move onto to something better (hopefully).
My house will be an investment. I don't love it yet. The HGTV feelings will never happen, but I hope that in three years, I will love my house as much as I love my apartment.
I hope I love my new neighborhood as much as I love this one. I hope that I can adjust to this new period quickly and without too much heartache.
As I sit here, in probably my last hours in my apartment alone, with it relatively unpacked up, I try to find solace in my changing life. As I pack boxes of books, art, clothing and wonder where to put them, I find myself wishing I wasn't leaving. It's hard.
It isn't just the new neighborhood, the new house with it's creaks and groans. It's the new responsibilities. Suddenly I have all this responsibility. I have to take care of things when they break, I have to do it, not just call my landlord and wait. I have property taxes to worry about, and I have to actually get to know my neighbors. I can't just up and leave anytime now. I know how whiny and privledged all this sounds, bite me.
My fiancee finds all this freeing I think, but it scares me. I feel so young to be taking this step. This step into more advanced adulthood. No one in my family has owned a house before. I am the flagship. They look at me differently now.
Packing up my life is harder than it was the last time. It's harder than when I left for college, leaving my friends, my mom alone in a shite neighborhood. It's harder than when my roommates and I split at my last house and not on particularly great terms. It's harder than flip-flopping between jobs and feeling like I am a waste of life on the downturns.
I don't like looking at my now empty bookshelves. I don't like looking at the boxes stacked in my living room. I feel oddly homeless. My apartment is beginning to feel like a stranger, like a friend that you've drifted from. My new house is big and empty, a stranger who is just beginning to become a friend.
The whole moving process is an exercise in exhaustion. Last week we spent 75 hours in 5 days prepping the new house for us to move in. It still needs more work, but my body, mind, and soul have no energy to give.
I'm sick of this. I want to be happy and excited, after all, I have no choice. It's happening.
It's happening.