The Last, at Last
My final night at the old apartment is being marked by nothing. See, I called it "the old apartment". I've already moved. My bed hasn't, and some piles of crap haven't, but everything else is at the apartment - "the new apartment" - i.e. home. I'm here now, at "the old apartment" (non-home, ex-home), marking my final night with nothing.
No last episode of Friends.
No last frozen dinner on the couch.
No last ritual airing-out of the foyer, which always seemed to smell like dead animal.
Okay, the place itself isn't much of a loss. I don't know whether I'm trying to be unsentimental or if there really isn't anything to be sentimental about. I have lived here for four whole years, which makes it the second longest I've lived anywhere. But, they were four tumultuous years. I have lived here with three different people, all good friends. But, we barely saw each other, same address or not. I have lived here through a lot of life changes. But, not the kind of changes that stopped me eating frozen dinners on the couch most nights. (That's less pathetic than it sounds. I do like them.) Sometimes I wonder, when the good and bad balance like this, whether anything has happened at all. That kind of tree-falls-in-the-forest thinking can drive you mad.
Pragmatist answer to the question: IT DOESN'T MATTER. I like it.
So, it seems that unsentimental is the way to go. No last anything, no photographs, no kissing the ground. This is weird for me. I tend to flail, emotionally. I cry when things go changing. I think up words that mean how I feel and write them down, arrange them. That I did, I guess. Just one more: okay.
No last episode of Friends.
No last frozen dinner on the couch.
No last ritual airing-out of the foyer, which always seemed to smell like dead animal.
Okay, the place itself isn't much of a loss. I don't know whether I'm trying to be unsentimental or if there really isn't anything to be sentimental about. I have lived here for four whole years, which makes it the second longest I've lived anywhere. But, they were four tumultuous years. I have lived here with three different people, all good friends. But, we barely saw each other, same address or not. I have lived here through a lot of life changes. But, not the kind of changes that stopped me eating frozen dinners on the couch most nights. (That's less pathetic than it sounds. I do like them.) Sometimes I wonder, when the good and bad balance like this, whether anything has happened at all. That kind of tree-falls-in-the-forest thinking can drive you mad.
Pragmatist answer to the question: IT DOESN'T MATTER. I like it.
So, it seems that unsentimental is the way to go. No last anything, no photographs, no kissing the ground. This is weird for me. I tend to flail, emotionally. I cry when things go changing. I think up words that mean how I feel and write them down, arrange them. That I did, I guess. Just one more: okay.
posted by Tracy at 8:53 PM
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