“Did I have a roommate when you met me?”
That was the question I asked my husband at 2:30 in the middle of the night as he finished up packing ahead of his departure for Michigan in the morning, where he’ll start his new job five weeks before I join him there.
“Yeah. Started with an ‘M’...”
"Merritt?"
"No."
“Molly?”
“No.”
“Maria?”
“Yep. That’s the one.”
“....So I’ve never lived alone as an adult.” A slow smile spread across my face.
“This is your first time living alone since college?” he asked.
“Yep.”
“Your first time living alone as an adult is as a newlywed...” he said, straightening up from the box he was packing and putting his hands on his hips, thinking about it.
“There’s something very interesting about that,” I said grinning.
He smiled back. “You get five weeks. Have fun.”
The last time I lived alone was my final summer before graduating college (which, especially in retrospect, definitely does not count as adulthood). I’d just turned 21, had completed two internships in New York, and was already planning on moving here in the fall. I only had a few classes that summer and was living in an apartment off campus, where I slept on a floor mattress my mom made and spent the evenings choreographing in the furniture-less apartment and looking online for a job here (which I found on Playbill.com in the form of an Eartha Kitt show, which precipitated me Googling "Eartha Kitt" one night because I didn't really know who she was). My freezer was stocked with Lean Cuisines, I missed the family cat Gem, and I went to every show that summer at Brown County Playhouse, where I volunteered as an usher (all the time wishing I were part of the production and looking forward with relish to the time soon when I would be) and then wrote papers on the plays for my theatre class. I took the bus to the Playhouse, frequently getting there an hour early because of the bus schedule, so I’d walk around and people-watch in the small, old-fashioned town of Brown County. Later my observations got jotted down, in notebooks I have long since carelessly misplaced.
I also wrote left-handed in my classes that summer because I wanted to teach myself something new and challenging.
And I knew with absolute certainty that I would find success and fulfillment in my future path and career. Because I had to. Because settling was never an option.
So what's changed since that summer? This summer, newly wed, I’m living in an apartment in an outer borough of New York City, where I spend my evenings choreographing in an apartment that not only has furniture but is now crammed with boxes, yet amazingly, still I find room to create. Every day I check online for jobs that would be a good fit for me in my future city. Eartha Kitt has passed on, and the note and engraved tin cup she gave me are packed up in one of our 80 boxes, but I recently had a goodbye lunch with the composer of that show, whose friendship has spanned my entire time in this city. There are no Lean Cuisines in my freezer, but I have a spice cabinet, and the fridge is full of fresh ingredients that I’ve learned by experimentation to turn into endless dishes (however, I sent my husband off this morning with a couple packs of ramen noodles and a reminder on how to make them, which is a “skill” he only learned the night we moved in to this apartment and still amazingly has not mastered). I still miss Gem, who is now long gone, but now I have another best fur friend, Mister, who asks to play all the time and likes the photo of Gem I keep on top of the entertainment center. I’m seeing every show for which I can get a discount ticket before I leave, writing essays on them that will never receive a grade and might never see the light of day but satisfy something in me to write. After years here of being a stage manager in productions, it feels very strange to just sit in the audience, like a vague ache I can’t quite pinpoint that washes over me at random points throughout the show. I take the Long Island Rail Road rather than the bus, but I still frequently get wherever I'm going an hour early because of the train schedule, so I walk around and people-watch in the biggest city in the country. My notes get jotted down in notebooks I will never misplace, and I look forward to discovering how what I've observed eventually works its way into either the novel I am currently writing or one whose idea has yet to be born.
I’m also teaching myself Italian this summer because I wanted to learn something new and challenging—though I use my right hand to take notes.
And though I might have learned to shift my dreams and my expectations to accommodate a world that does not always bend to my will, I still know I will find success and fulfillment in my future path and career. Because I have to. Because settling is never an option.
Some things change radically over the years, but some shift like a sea mollusk’s shell, growing more ridges, whorls, and chambers, new shades subtly reflecting new surroundings, changing slowly and steadily, day by day, yet at the core still retaining everything they once were.
My dad has always said I missed out on the true college experience every young person should have because of how little time I spent on campus. I know I've missed other experiences most people have as part of growing up. My mom speaks of the time in her twenties when she spent several quiet days, alone, doing repair work on her house after some big changes in her life and one evening realized she had spent 24 hours never speaking to or seeing another soul. Since she grew up in a small house with many siblings, she had never before had that experience, and she thinks of it as an epiphany, a point where she emerged more aware of her inner strength. My dad has told stories of the time he went on the three-day solo portion of an Outward Bound course in Colorado in winter, or the numerous weekend solo backpack trips he did in the back country of Yosemite, long before the existence of cell phones and with no portable radio in his pack to listen to human voices. I don’t have the survival skills of either of them, and New York City might not be as challenging as back country, but I figure sometimes, in its own ways, it has its moments of being pretty close.
And so, with my husband somewhere on the road between here and the land of “pop” (it’s soda—I will never convert), as I look around the quiet, box-filled apartment now nearly devoid of photographs and pictures and mementos (except for the photo of Gem and one of my mom holding me as a baby, which still stand on the otherwise barren entertainment center that no longer holds any movies or equipment), and as I tell our cat not to worry, that I can handle his 40-pound bag of cat litter and I won’t always spill it on the floor like this morning... strange as it might be, much as I will miss my husband (which is a lot), I think in a way I will have fun these last five weeks in the only city I have ever lived in as an adult, for the first time ever living alone as an adult.
It’s something new. It’s something challenging. It’s something interesting.
As long as my vacuum keeps working and can handle spilled litter, I think I’m good.
