Apartment 402
photo credit: Wix Images/Media
I walked into the rental office to pick up the keys to my new apartment and couldn't help feeling a little nervous.
I hadn't lived in an apartment in 25 plus years. The rental agent was an older lady with warm eyes and had comforting words wishing me well in my new home. "Good luck and hope you enjoy it". I appreciated the sentiment. I was still a little shocked I had actually gone through with it.
Just a few months earlier I had separated from my husband, mourned the loss of my mother and accepted a job in a town hours away from my home. My intention was to settle in to my new town and my son happened to be attending college in the same town but I promised him I would not cramp his style with neediness or my relationship drama as I navigated my separation.
It was days after Christmas when I moved in. My son helped me drive a portion of my belongings from my home in NC to my new digs in a small college town in Virginia. I appreciated his help and it was a somewhat strange juxtaposition since I had helped him move in to his sophomore year apartment just months earlier having no idea I would end up just minutes from his place in the same town.
As I turned the key I was feeling a little bit of excitement, fear and anticipation. I couldn't help but think of what a pivotal moment it was and as they say when one door closes another one opens.
What I quickly learned was, I enjoyed my freedom. I enjoyed my alone time and I was happy leaving behind domestic responsibilities that seemed cumbersome and mundane. I could go to happy hour when I wanted and every day was girls night out. Even if it was just me. I could sit at the bar eat dinner and meet new people and pretend to be someone else or exactly who I had turned into.
I had shaken the chains of suburbia and embraced my new lifestyle. Looking back I realized I had some things that I needed to revisit that were cut short in my 20s. I will say Living alone is not all it's cracked up to be, but after a couple failed marriages, sending two kids off to college and the chaos of stepparenting while attempting to blend a family that didn't want to be blended , I welcomed not only loneliness, but anonymity that living in a different town and being alone created.
Somewhere in my 40s, I lost who I was. I didn't make time for myself and I totally abandoned the hobbies and interests that made me unique. I hated how stifled I felt during those years. It was liberating to let them go and see life through a new lens.
During my time in apartment, 402 I let go of so many fears I had and believed in myself again. The unknown is always scary, but somehow I looked at it as a new adventure. No one to answer to, no one to explain anything to, and nobody to put their needs ahead of my own. It was a turning point for me back then. I felt like a snake shedding it skin reborn into something different something provocative.
It wasn't the fanciest of places, but if those walls could talk, they would tell you that it was a place that changed me in all the right ways, and I grew up and finally learned how to depend on myself, believe in myself, and shut down the negative noise, I used to hear in my head.
I'm really grateful for those years. And I know I was meant to discover new paths that I traveled. Some I didn't stay on, but at least I got to take a look down the road and see what it had to offer. I like to say my life has been a mosaic and it truly has. Lots of different colors, different chapters and shapes. I definitely didn't have the white picket fence and I finally realized that wasn't who I was and never had been. I was always meant for the mosaic. Living different tiny pieces of life and connecting them together to create this brilliant picture. When I stopped trying to put myself in box and embrace the colorful chapters that defined me, I was finally able to see the beautiful patchwork that has been created and that could never be replicated by anyone else representing the unique story of me.
Xoxo
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