Recipe for Moving Out of Your Childhood Home
Don't already have moved out of your actual childhood home in the first place, it softens the blow way too much, and lessens the dramatic moment you're allowed to have.
Stop returning back to your parent's house every 4-5 business days, no amount of soft cheese and dinners offered to you will make it worth the drama of having say goodbye each time.
Especially if you're a crier
Take your dogs with you
Steal a roll of toilet paper or two
Forget that you're 23 and should be above it all.
Call your mom every day, sometimes twice
Your dad too
Try not to cry on the subway: challenge mode: impossible.
I always wondered if I reached an equilibrium in my life—an income, healthy relationships, hobbies, and free time—if it would mean I’d be supremely happy. The short answer is no.
Breaking news: life is really hard. And it keeps being hard, even when there’s no good reason for it to be.
Say, for example, you move into a relatively spacious apartment in Brooklyn, and you find yourself spiraling about how fast time is moving. Like, the year you spent living at home was also often spent complaining about living at home. Now, you’re not there anymore, and the lens has completely changed. I miss the familiar beat of the banter, the ability to completely unmask myself around my parents, and not having to pay for my own groceries.
The last one is especially important—why is grocery shopping something that needs to be done every week? The closest Trader Joe's is around a mile away from my apartment. It’s the only place where the walk in this heatwave feels justified—I need to get my produce and frozen entrees. Yesterday, I decided to venture there at around 5:00. Obviously, that’s a major rookie mistake. As I soared down the escalator, I looked up behind me to see new people multiplying like spawns in a video game. The aisles were rampant with dirty looks and sweaty brows. After picking out my share of soup dumplings and the ingredients to make pasta salad, I joined the line of people and was grateful that they were so comfortable disassociating in public so that I could do the same.
The walk home was horrid—96 degrees with two heavy bags on my shoulders. Darn you, the chicken stock I need for the very specific pasta sauce recipe I saw on TikTok. By the 0.8 mile mark, I caught my breath under a slim awning of shade and dropped my bags to the floor. An Uber was only $6 and would have me home in 10 minutes. There would be air conditioning and a comfortable seat and a better world. I kept walking.
The level of energy I was exerting felt strangely familiar to r unning sprints in high school, which was far harder and often hotter. So, I slung my bag onto my hip and kept onward. If I used to be able to run around for three hours, subsisting on two eggs in my stomach and watered-down Gatorade from a cooler, I think I could make myself keep walking at a moderate pace. But like, where’s my medal though?
Today, I walked outside for exactly five minutes before I turned around and stepped right back into my apartment. It was that hot. I couldn’t risk the walk to the coffee shop because the last time I did that, I got there and there was no seating inside. My iced coffee and I melted on the patio outside the cafe until a spot opened up. By that point, I went to the bathroom only to be confronted by a dead roach.
I jumped back, my stomach upturning immediately. It took everything in me not to dry heave over the sink, but I didn’t want to be anywhere near a drain. I had to sit back in my seat, stabilize my breathing, and convince myself I wasn’t going to pass out. Ultimately, I survived, shaken and afraid.
My week has been kind of dull so far, despite it being Tuesday, a low level of energy for absolutely no reason. Until, I made eye contact with a massively fluffy Samoyed dog. He walked away from his owner and lay down under my table, peeking his head up to watch me. Interacting with this dog made me giddy, kind of like a cure to the low moments of the week.
While it’s true, I miss my dogs and my parents, and sometimes my sisters, I’m figuring things out here—roaches and rats and all. I think I’m doing pretty okay!
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