Choosing the Walk of Shame
Wednesday, March 31st, 2010For the foreseeable future, I will continue to live in the same apartment. I will continue to live alone. Financially, it makes sense (the rent will have gone up only $35 in six years), but I wonder if there isn’t something more to it than that.
Although I’ve lived in this particular apartment for five years prior to renewing my lease, I’ve been on my own since 2002. Which means that for the past 8 years I’ve been coming home to the same stacks of books, the same coffee table clutter, and the same framed photos of friends and family who live elsewhere.
A person can get used to certain things after that amount of time. Used to stocking (or not) the fridge with blocks of cheese, store brand yogurt, and stale bread. Used to leaving dishes in the sink for two weeks and letting the laundry pile up. Used to watching certain shows on certain days without scheduling conflicts. Used to peace and quiet. Used to having space.
Truthfully though, the topic of living together has never really materialized. Not that it would have come up at all, but if it had, I guess you could say I headed it off at the pass. Abruptly, I shared my intentions with him one day last January. Barring a bizarre uptick in rent, I’d be renewing. And so I have.
I’m not ready. I’ve got a good thing going here. No matter what else is going on in my life, I’ve always had my own place to come back to. This apartment has proven a constant in my life when everything else has been uncertain.
The apartment itself is not perfect. It’s old and there’s that whole ghost situation to contend with, and oddly enough, the bathroom is off of my bedroom and the only closets are in the hall and the living room (which means I trek back and forth between rooms countless times while dressing). Somehow though, it all works. The lake is across the street, I have easy access to public transportation when it decides to show up, the grocery stores (yes, there are two) are a block away- though it feels more like six blocks when it’s eight degrees outside- and my friends and boyfriend live nearby.
And that’s the thing. Having my boyfriend live a block away means there’s no real inconvenience in seeing one another (although the walk home in the morning makes me feel super SKANKY- I want to shout at people in the elevator and passersby, “I’m in a committed relationship!!!!”). We’re together when we want to be; in our own places when we’d rather be alone. We don’t even have each other’s keys. It works. At least for now.
That said, my perhaps too easily made decision to continue living alone is thrown into odd contrast by my own brothers’ living situations. They seem hell bent on being grown ups, or some version thereof. One brother has been shacking up with his long term girlfriend for the past two years, and the other is poised to begin cohabiting this summer with his girlfriend of just over a year. I guess I can understand their living situations, but I just don’t see what all the hurry is about.
I think it’s important for a person to live alone for a time. You’re forced to fend for yourself, to take care of the things that arise in the day to day (like lighting the pilot on your gas stove for example), and you end up learning a lot about yourself in the process. I think it’s a necessary step in becoming part of who you grow to be.
At a certain point though, I wonder if a person doesn’t just grow complacent. If once you’ve achieved and mastered the whole “living alone” thing, you forget how to do anything else. I wonder if that’s me; if I’ll ever feel “ready” to give up the security and reliability of being on my own and supporting myself.
Wow, I just went to read your ghost story! What’s been happening with that? I had the same thing happen to me in the house I grew up in! I ended up moving away. But later in another apartment, had a sighting. I did the same thing you did, telling it to go. And it did! It sounded like this one just wanted some attention, lol.
As for living arrangements: it’s your life and your apartment. My ideal would be to have my own place right next door to my SO. Or at least my own room!
I actually had some more weird stuff happen last summer- mostly involving my books being moved around. I ended up having some ghost people come into the apartment and see if they could find anything. Same thing happened while they were here. They took some recordings too and when they played it back, one of them says “I love you” after I said that even though there were people there trying to learn more, that I still don’t want to be touched. So creepy. But at least it seems like it’s the good kind rather than the scary.
I have only lived alone once, in a skanky building in the middle of Vancouver two summers ago, after becoming (gloriously) single after six years. It was fantastic, at the grand old age of 31 to finally have my own breathing space.
Sad, too to think I hadn’t done it before that.
You paint a lovely picture.
it seems to me that if what you have going now is working just fine, then there’s no sense in changing things up. the good thing is, that you and your manfriend live close enough to be with each other conveniently when you want to, but to also get back home easily when you want some solo time. my guy and i live “close” (like a 10 minute drive)… but it’s still a hassle with parking, and packing a damn bag every time we want to stay, etc.
and um, wow. i just read about the ghost. i want to hear more!
I totally get your apartment warm fuzzies and wonder if living with someone else will involve too much compromise.
Now I’m off to read about this ghost!
First, I’m glad you’re staying put
Selfishly. But I think you’re on to something when you talk about living alone and being complacent. I fear almost living with someone else at this point because of the level of compromise I fear coming.
Jessica- I think you’ve hit upon the very thing I’ve been realizing too. Compromise in your living situation….I haven’t done that in SO long. I compromise all the time- at work, with my friends, in my relationship (although it’s more mutual than I ever thought possible)- but my home life has been completely up to me since I graduated from college. I’ll never go back to having a roommate, but I hope that one day I’ll be brave enough to share a living space with a man when the time is right.
P.S. Hooray for your vacation! You’ll have THE best time!
I am NOT a roommate person. I lived alone for a number of years before my boyfriend (now husband) and I moved in together. It made sense financially and from a time perspective — he worked nights and lived in the West Loop while I worked days and lived in Buena Park. It was an intimidating prospect for both of us, but on the flip side, we’d been through so much together already that we figured we’d make it work somehow. There are still things I don’t like about living with another person — the mess, needing time to myself and not always getting it — but now I’ve gotten to a point where I’m happier when he’s there than when he’s not. But if we ever broke up, I would so NOT have a roommate. Because that? Would drive me batshit crazy. Living with a SO is about the only thing I can handle.