Apartment 12-1D. I've moved out, forward all mail, but leave all bills please.
I sit here in my new home while rain pours outside and ponder the newness of this place, and all the memories of the old apartment. As with many posts on this blog I feel an incredible rush and urgency until the moment I begin to write then find a traffic jam of feeling and emotion sitting at my finger tips and an empty screen staring back.
I grew up in 12-1D. I may have graduated high school and gotten my first job in my parents house but growing up really started one night when I put a final load in my Dodge Avenger and drove into Houston to my new apartment.
When you spend a decade in a place you come to identify with it. You know it, you know the exact position of the knobs for a hot shower. You know the exact way to close the door. There are well worn paths throughout your place, they guide you no matter how dark.
Many neighbors came and went, but I stayed. I had a corner apartment, shaded in the morning.
I met my wife and we spent the first three years of our marriage in that little apartment. I will never be able to think of that apartment without a tiny knot of sentimentally welling up in my throat. Even the hard stuff seems easy in retrospect. When I first moved out I had little or no money. I ate Ramen noodles, watched TV on a 12'' screen. Weekends were spent alone, I couldn't afford to go out.
I grew up in 12-1D. There are memories, more than I can count. Most of the good ones involve my wife, my Heather. Before her I thought of my tiny apartment as a black hole, a place where I disappeared for a few hours of sleep. She put life into my tiny little black hole, she brought in the light.
One memory before I get to the story of moving out. Our first Christmas as a couple. Heather convinced me to get a Christmas tree. We were in the middle of finals, but we couldn't force ourselves to pay attention to them. We spent time watching Christmas movies, drinking hot chocolate, and staring at the most sparsely decorated tree ever. That Christmas was the first that I can remember thinking of that apartment as home. Prior to that Christmas home was always spent at my parents place, it was home, after that Christmas my apartment was home.
Moving out wasn't a hard decision, but the whole event has lingered in my mind.
Next post, getting the house.
