Places I Have Lived: My First Apartment

I lived in my first apartment from May 2006 to October 2007, i.e., before I started the tradition of naming all the places where I live. Still, My First Apartment has its own distinctive title and place in history that no other place has or can ever have.

A week or so before I graduated college, I moved into a one-bedroom, second-floor apartment. Being that it was one of the cheapest apartments in suburban college town that was about a half hour away from a major city, rent was $875, all utilities included except electricity. I don’t remember what the outside looked like very well, but I remember I’d been so excited about the small private balcony and the double closets. The apartment complex had a small fitness center that was a short walk away next to a pizza place and a tattoo shop, and there was a pool somewhere around but I’d never seen it; I couldn’t afford to pay to go in it, so I didn’t bother to learn anything about it, like where it was.

My friend hung out with me the first night in my new place and helped me get extremely drunk. At one point, we had to go back to his house to get his portable TV, and his roommates or the next-door neighbors were throwing a party, and I only remember the noise of people having fun and me looking down at the sidewalk as I stumbled into the house. Then we went back to my new apartment, where there was absolutely no furniture, and we fell asleep on the floor in front of the TV. In the morning, he left for work, and I was in the throes of the worst hangover I’d ever had. I kept staggering from where I’d slept on the dining room floor to the bathroom to puke out my less-important organs and back again. There was no food to sop up the alcohol still lingering in my bloodstream—the only things in the fridge were boxed wine, a six-pack of PBR, and some freezy pops. Worsening my condition was the knowledge that my parents were driving two-and-a-half hours to visit me and bring me a bed and a desk, so in between bouts of barfing, I must’ve prayed to a higher power to make me well enough to heave heavy furniture from the parking lot and up a flight of stairs, because somehow I made it through that horrible experience without shriveling up into a dehydrated husk.

I lived in My First Apartment during my personal Dark Ages, which were mostly the result of growing pains. This definitely played a huge part in how much I enjoyed the place, which was not much. Living by myself hadn’t really been what I’d wanted then: An ex-boyfriend and I had fantasized about our ideal apartment together. We talked about how it would be above an Italian pizzeria, and there’d be a balcony that we’d sit on and smoke cigarettes and hang marionettes over the side. Our cabinets would be full of his boring rice and my unhealthy Spaghetti-Os. We’d get a goldfish named Larry, I’d walk around in my underwear while he cooked for me, and he aspired to host “tea regalias.” But we were so on-again, off-again that I chose a place I could afford on my own if I had to.

And I had to. It put a gloomy, lonely spin on a situation I otherwise should’ve been prouder of at the time: I graduated college with a 3.75 GPA and immediately was hired as an editor in my first adult job! I lived on my own! I had my own car for the first time! ♫All the women, who independent, throw your hands up at me!♫ But desperation, confusion, and overwhelm were my new home’s potpourri. I was a self-conscious novice at everything, and everything I did felt awkward. Throughout my life, I had always been good at entertaining myself when I was on my own, but at this point, I didn’t know what to do being both alone and lonely. Solo adventures were meager and forced. I had trouble getting used to life and feeling comfortable.

I attempted decorating my adult home with thrifty, fun-loving, carefree style. I tossed about some beanbag chairs, and orange Wawa milk crates served as shelves for my VHS collection. (No, none of these events took place in 1985.) I had a blue, tiny love seat with no legs on the floor of the living room. I hung a beaded curtain across the kitchen door and a vinyl world map shower curtain in the bathroom, and displayed some mismatching paintings I made on the walls next to teamwork- and quality-in-the-workplace posters from my job. I got turquoise fabric to sew curtains so that when the sunlight would filter through, the room would look underwater, but I never made them. Hundreds of magnetic words clung to those bedroom’s closet doors, and I insisted friends draw me pictures using colored markers when they showed up so I could post them on the kitchen cabinets (and remind myself that, in spite of my sadness, I indeed had friends, the kind who’d obligingly draw me pictures). The result was that every room looked like a “before” shot of a child’s playroom prior to it being cleaned or redesigned to look like a space people would actually want to spend time in. The colorful chaos didn’t distract me from my woes and only further reminded me how far I felt from being an adult with common sense.

I couldn’t afford the Internet, which strengthened my disconnect from others. When I wasn’t seeking reasons to get out of the apartment, I forced myself to be creative. I took up crocheting extra-long blankets and too-short scarves. I sewed myself some bell bottoms and obsessively read my tarot cards, which gave the same “You need to dump your boyfriend” advice every single time, only they phrased it more esoterically. I cut up poems I’d written and pasted them back together as new poems: magnetic poetry without the magnetic aspect. I made a house for My Little Ponies out of stacked shoeboxes. I also worked on a “lie-ary”: a bound book with completely fictional, handwritten diary entries penned by a nonexistent scandalous teen. My intent was to write the diary and then put it on eBay, saying, “I hate my sister, so I’m selling her diary to the highest bidder,” and then hopefully make sixty dollars off this ruse. I wound up just donating it to the Salvation Army.

I had a TV, but only access to local channels, so episodes of “Who’s the Boss?” would serve as comforting background noise. I ate homemade taco dip and played the original Final Fantasy on my Nintendo. (Again, this was not 1985.) This was the time when Netflix was new to the scene, so I had at least three DVDs to watch at all times. I watched the first season of Beverly Hills 90210 and failed to both enjoy it like I did when I was nine years old and understand how Brandon Walsh got to hook up with so many chicks.

I did, however, come to love grocery shopping, and having my first apartment propelled me to learn how to cook. I’d never really cooked much of anything before except heating up those aforementioned Spaghetti-Os in the microwave, so I didn’t really have the first clue of where to start. (This was way before Pinterest recipe boards existed.) I got cooking books geared to children from the library and flipped through the now-antiquated Tightwad Gazette for ideas, and this was how I came to experiment making hot dog casseroles and garlic potato soup using a packet of garlic mashed potato mix and not actual potatoes or garlic. I haven’t eaten anything I made during this period since; just smelling them cook revives those depressed, pathetic feelings. Probably the two healthiest snacks to come out of this era was feta, spinach, and tomato on English muffins and veggie-egg scramble with a fuck-ton of basil and a few sprinkles of cinnamon. These two recipes, perhaps, just barely made up for the nights when I’d simply fry up an entire package of bacon and eat it in one sitting.

Eventually I smuggled a cat, Cartoon, into my place without paying the pet fee, and that helped abate some of the dreariness, although it added an unexpected scoop of guilt: This tiny creature depended on me to keep it alive and well, but I didn’t feel deserving of its trust and love. (I’ve had friends ask if I was ever Catholic or Jewish.) In addition to consoling me, the cat was helpful in spotting the menacing centipedes that would zip their way across the rug or up the wall. I remember once I saw a huge centipede over the closet door, and I stood on a chair with a flip flop in hand and debated what to do. I only had one shot to slay the beast—if I missed, it’d surely dart in the closet and play in all my clothes, only to reappear on the nightmarish day when I’d realize we were both snuggled up in the same sweater. My solution was to call Bamboo and have him come over earlier than he’d originally planned so he could crush it while I covered my eyes and ears in the next room.

By October 2007, I was sick of being unhappy and poor. Living in the same town where I went to college had lost its appeal and run out of opportunities for me, and trying to make it work in a place I no longer liked seemed pointless. And so this living arrangement came to an end and I returned back to my hometown to live with my family until June 2009, when I finally got back on my feet and moved into the very glamorous-sounding The Mansion...

—

Please leave a comment and share this content with your friends on social media—
this helps ensure the continuation of the content you love!