13 December 2003 (Saturday)

living with it

The problem with this apartment is what I associate with it -- memories that have collected and still cling to the walls. A number of painful arguments have happened here. There's been a lot of curling up into a ball and staring at the ceiling, mired too deep into a strange despair even to move. And just walking in the door sometimes reminds me of all the lonely evenings I've spent here, working in solitude when I might have been somewhere else, connecting with people, laughing. This is where I've come when I had nowhere else to go. This is where I do all the stuff I hate doing.

An incomplete picture, of course. There have been plenty of perfectly innocuous nights in this apartment's history with me. The light is beautiful at any time of day, and I love going down the stairs at noon to eat at the Thai restaurant next door. I was standing in this doorway between the main room and the kitchen, curling my fingers against the thick white paint, when I took a phone call that changed my life. I remember hanging up and bouncing all over the room, onto this chair, spinning here on the linoleum floor.

There are times when I badly want a house. Just a two-bedroom place with a basement or garage, and hiking trails nearby. But this is both financially impossible and logically untenable, and anyhow I suspect it's just a desire to move on from this place in particular. Bury the bad memories; press the good ones into a scrapbook and put them away. Don't live with them. Start anew.

For now, a compromise. Loft the bed. Hang the pictures. Change the lamps. Buy a couch, curtains for the bay windows, cloth for the kitchen table. This place has never been home, but maybe that's because I've never allowed it to be. Time to find out.

posted by enjelani @ 01:34 PM PST [ link ]