Over the last few weeks, I've started to write several blog posts... and I always get too tired to finish them. Turns out living on your own as an adult when you're also packing for a cross-country move and showing the apartment and working is exhausting (especially with a cat who guarantees you only get five hours of sleep max a night). So instead of the weekly installments I intended, here's a little summary of how the weeks have played out for me and how my five-week “adventure” of living on my own for the first time as an adult has evolved.
Week 1:
I went to a rock concert by myself for the first time this week. As I walked up to the venue in search of the will-call line, the two different giant lines out on the sidewalk confused me, so I asked a guy who looked like he knew what he was doing if one was for "will call." The guy turned out to be the band's tour manager and escorted me inside to the box office, where he told the woman there to "take care of" me. I was unable to convince box office lady I wasn't with the band, despite two denials, and she handed me a ticket without ever checking my reservation. The venue was a mixture of tables at the front, standing room in the middle, and a bar at the back. I was seated at a table with a couple and another single girl, who clearly felt very awkward and uncomfortable being there alone and looked as if she were trying to fold in on herself. As soon as I was seated and ordered my tea (because that's a normal rock concert drink, right?) I pulled out The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (I had to pack most of my books already, so I chose a 500-page book to tide me over), because reading some British protofeminist literature while waiting for a rock concert to start is also normal, right? After staring at me for 30 seconds, the single girl across from me reached for her bag, dug around, and pulled out her 500 page book. We never spoke to each other, but we both read contentedly across from each other for over half an hour, two quiet girls amid a sea of beer-drinking, chatting, laughing couples.
Near the end of the concert, as all the bills were being dropped on tables for drinks and/or food, I became aware I didn't have a bill. As soon as the concert ended, I asked a waiter why I didn't get a bill. "Don't worry about it," he said with a smile and walked off.
So that was my first solo rock concert. Other things I intend to do in the next several weeks: Go back to the Metropolitan Museum of Art one more time, go to the
Week 2:
My TV broke. "Broke" is actually putting it gently. It became possessed when it was already powered off and screamed like a banshee at two in the morning and refused to turn off again with the power switch, so I pulled the plug on it. This is my cat's reaction after I pulled the plug:
I tried to plug it back in briefly, and it repeated its banshee screams, so it's been unplugged ever since. And I have rediscovered BBC Radio 4, which I loved in college. So now instead of having The Golden Girls and Murder, She Wrote on late at night (how old am I?), I'm listening to discussions about monkeys who can make robots in other countries run on a treadmill just by thinking about it, debates on the morality of bringing back wooly mammoths (yes, the technology is there, albeit with elephant genes to fill gaps) and other extinct and soon-to-be-extinct species, a series on the history of ideas, short documentaries on the perception of time, and Inspector Alleyn mysteries (hey, I have to replace Murder, She Wrote with something comparable). My conclusion: Contemporary British radio is far more interesting than contemporary American TV. Also, after listening to so many Brits talking for so long, the first time in the day that I hear a real live person speak here in the city, their accent jars my ear for about 15 seconds as I hear their American accent, which is a very strange experience.
Week 3:
I don't remember week three. It went by in two seconds. I got about eight hours of sleep total for the week, and I started to get really sick of packing—and taking the vacuum cleaner out of the boiler room. I really, really, really hate lifting up our stupid vacuum cleaner to move it out into the living room. On the upside, this is the week I became a packing-tape zen master. I can now tape up a box in record time. I have conquered the packing tape and I am its master.
My cat enjoying some of the boxes I have masterfully taped:
Week 4:
In week four someone started banging on my apartment door. And ringing the bell. At any random time of day—or in one case, night, which was the scariest because after he rang and knocked aggressively, I could see through the peephole that the guy started sorting through keys as if looking for one to use on the door, and he only went away when my neighbor serendipitously happened to come home. I assume these are loonies who want to see the apartment because they've seen it listed on rental sites all over the Internet, but they still freak me out, especially after seeing the guy take out keys. So starting in week four, I began barricading my door—not just placing heavy items in front of it, but working out the geometry of it in a chain of boxes from the door to the wall so that no amount of force can open the door. When I'm out of the apartment, I still barricade the door so that only someone as tiny as I am can get in. Week four is also when I started having to really work to remember to eat dinner because all I wanted to do (or had time to do) at night was go to sleep. At one point I asked my husband over the phone if he’d make me spaghetti, but he said no. Bummer.
Week 5:
This week I'm exhausted. I took my last ballet class with my all-time favorite teacher today, and tomorrow will have two more "lasts" with other favorite ballet teachers. After class at Steps on Broadway, I returned my last NYPL library book and then sat on the grassy knoll outside Lincoln Center, across from Juilliard, and had a lunch picnic while I called my husband and asked him to tell me how the Juilliard front I was looking at compared to its pre-renovation existence when he was there, and where scenes from the ballet cult movie Center Stage (from around the same time he was at Juilliard) were shot. It was something we intended to do together but never got around to. Also this week, I finally met a young couple in our building for the first time. In three and a half years here, my husband and I never met anyone. And I met our landlord for the first time. And when showing the apartment to one couple, the man of the couple looked at the bathtub (which is admittedly very nice for a New York City bathtub) and said very matter-of-factly, “Oh, that’s where our child will be conceived.” My cat liked that couple. But he doesn’t like everyone the realtor shows the apartment to. He particularly disliked the guy who came in texting, never looked up, tried to film the whole tour, knocked over my cat’s water bowl without apologizing, and opened my fridge and all my drawers. My cat has excellent people-judging skills. Oh, and my cat has grown completely infatuated with his reflection this week. This is him admiring himself:
With two more days until my husband arrives to help me finish packing, here are my conclusions about my first time living alone as an adult:
1. I’m glad I did it, because it was hard.
2. It’s hard. It’s hard to never have anyone to help you do anything, whether that’s doing a full litter change or vacuuming the apartment or making dinner after a really long day or doing the dishes when you’re tired or waking up to reassure the cat three times in a night that no one’s going to pack him in a box or forget him.
3. Care packages from my parents are the best. I already knew this, but they’re especially nice when you just want a break and want someone to take care of you for a bit. (I say this with a homemade brownie and a tangerine from my mom to the side of my computer.) Also, the notes in care packages are the best. In the age of Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and e-mail, there’s something so wonderful and personal about an actual handwritten note, especially when you’re alone.
4. I have more respect than ever for my mom, who packed a house while taking care of a newborn (me), a 21-month-old, and two cats, one of whom was going blind and dying of leukemia. Any one of those things is hard on its own, and she dealt with all of them at the same time while my dad was at the office all day. I feel these last couple weeks like I don’t know how to squeeze out any extra energy sometimes, and I can’t even conceive of doing what she did. My mom is Wonder Woman.
5. Of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Teddy Roosevelt house museum, and Grant’s tomb, I made it to… none of them.
6. While I’m sure there is some way to wrap up this post on a note that is both witty and wistful, comedic yet meaningful, self-deprecating yet self-aware, I haven’t the faintest notion how to do that because I really really really really really need a nap. I’m going to go take a shower, put on my “I Can’t Adult Today” t-shirt, and go to bed. And when I wake up, I’ll be one day away from someone else helping to do the litter, the vacuuming, the packing, and the waking up at odd hours of the night to comfort our cat. Maybe he’ll even make me spaghetti.
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