Saturday is my last day in my apartment. I’m trying and failing not to be really sad. This was my first apartment, and it’s home. The past 5 years have been really off and on of being stable or not, more financially unstable than not,m being unhappy more than I wasn’t. But this was always the place I went back to, the place I could finally have some solitude, take bubble baths, bake cakes, and cuddle with my cats. It’s where I had my terrible first kiss and where I experienced my first break up. It’s where I first learned the wonderful feeling of closing a door behind someone and locking it, knowing they were never coming back. It’s where I brought the cats home, back when they were so small I could fit them in my pocket, and where I watched them grow up. It’s where my undergrad diploma sat in a drawer for 2 years before I finally bought a frame for it and hung it on the wall for the first time. It’s where I learned how awesome a full sized bed is when you’ve been sleeping on a twin for over 20 years. 

It was my first place that was just mine. It’s where I learned everything I know about being an adult. 

This apartment became part of me, like another friend, even a family member, something I could trust. Something I could go to when everything else fell apart. It was something I could be proud of when everything else went to hell. And come Sunday, it won’t be mine anymore. 

Next week likely someone else will be moving in and it won’t be mine anymore. I won’t have it. I’ll have nowhere to run to that’s just mine. There won’t be any true solitude. No walls to talk to because there’s no one else listening. Nowhere to rage when the world keeps kicking at me and there’s no one to hear me curse it. 

It’d be fine if I were moving on to something else, moving forward in my life, to something or somewhere better. But I’m not. I’m moving backwards and tripping and falling all the way. I’m losing everything. I don’t want to hear about the doors that will supposedly be opening now that this one is closed. I don’t want to hear about how things will supposedly get better. (You’ve been saying that for years. Find a new tune to play.) I don’t want my books and bakeware and coats and knives and furniture and everything familiar to go to storage. 

I want my home. A home. 

And I want my life to stop sucking so much.