Last Month's Rent

I remember wanting to have my own apartment ever since I watched "Anything But Love" with my parents as a young teenager. I will always remember the two thoughts the show brought to mind: 1) I can't wait to have my own apartment someday! and 2) I hope my boobs get as big as Jamie Lee's!

And nearly two years ago, I got wish #1. (Wish #2 came my senior year of high school, and I've been wishing for B-cups ever since.) I had once heard that you should live alone before you're 25. Which may be an unnecessarily young cutoff age for the adventure that is "living alone", but I was determined. To live in the city. To have my own place. And so I moved. Everything, all by myself, except for my mattress and dresser, which a girl I barely even knew helped me move out of Arlington and into the Budget van, and then up a narrow elevator and dark hall into my new Adams Morgan apartment building. I assembled all of my furniture. And I stocked the refrigerator/icebox (yes! an icebox! from 1954!) with all of my own food.

And over the past two years I have left my own dishes in the sink and my own clothes on the floor. I have eaten entire meals standing in front of the refrigerator and drank nearly all servings of milk from the carton. I have eaten alone at The Diner and sat by myself at the movies. I have laughed too loud while watching TV without company and cried too hard without someone to hug me. I have tried to scratch that one part of your back that you never can reach without someone else's help. I have laughed at the commercials that suggest finding 20 minutes a day to spend by yourself and the cultural taboo of drinking alone. I have smoked cigarettes out my window and drank bottles of red wine while listening to The Shins. I have killed really effing big bugs. I have held extensive conversations with myself out loud and sang at the top of my lungs. I have gone entire days without talking to anyone, while also racking up $300 cell phone bills talking to all the friends and family I miss being around. I have figured out what they mean when they say you have to be comfortable with yourself.

And so I just put my last month's rent check in the mail. A month from today I will no longer call my apartment home. And although I can't wait to leave DC, I can't imagine not living here. In my adorable shoebox apartment, that doesn't even have a couch/dishwasher/garbage disposal, at the end of the crumby hallway, at the top of the shitty stairwell, to the left of the late '70s metallic lobby, in Adams Morgan. I will never forget all that I found in 300 square feet of rented space in the best neighborhood in DC.