#24 a love letter to living alone

but also a street easy ad for my apartment

Living alone felt like a double-edged sword, and I didn’t know if I was adult enough for it yet. I don’t know if you ever do typically adult things (moving countries, getting married, having children, negotiating your compensation) when you’re fully prepared, or they just happen and you have to say I’ll figure it out as it unfolds.

Last fall I needed to move out of a bad living situation, and I needed to do it quick. When I walked into the large sunlit studio on the Upper East Side, I only had three questions - whether it had sunlight, because winter was around the corner, whether it was close to work, because we were back to in person 5 days a week, and whether it was available for immediate move in.

Had I seen closets the size of this apartment? Yes, on Keeping Up With The Kardashians. Would it be very scary living by myself? As a young woman with not many friends and zero family in a country with high rates of crime and gun violence, no shit. But I didn’t care. I said I’ll figure it out as it unfolds, and went back to the leasing office to pay the security deposit, and ask that they draw up a lease in my name.

Doing it all alone, based on my income and a credit score I had built, in one of the most expensive cities in the world made me feel a weird pride, and I toasted to Thai takeout and a CVS bottle of wine with my best friend out on the fire escape.

I went about making it home : first, filling it with necessities - a new mattress, a desk to work and write at, cutlery and groceries and a Keurig in the kitchen. Then, with things I adored - prints of Matisse paintings from the 1900’s, lamps with yellow light, a skincare cabinet the size of a small pharmacy, and because there was a lovely florist and bodega on the corner, fresh flowers every weekend.

Through long destination-less walks with hot coffee in cold weather and iced coffee on rare days when New York soared above ten degrees, I befriended the neighborhood. The smiling doormen outside apartment buildings on Park Avenue, the restaurants and the various bagel shops, which I pitted against each other in my own head, trying a new one each Sunday morning. If I walked three avenues I arrived, past charming brownstones that screamed Manhattan’s wealth, at Museum Mile. Many freezing winter mornings were spent sitting on the Met Steps, and I had them all to myself because no one else wanted to freeze their ass off like I did.

I found the closest Target, Sephora, and Whole Foods. I know that particular subway station like the back of my hand. I will remember this 6 block radius of Manhattan forever, just from the hours I’ve spent observing it, not distracted by the company of anyone else.

The apartment of course, came with its cons. There was no dishwasher, but I learnt to do the dishes while listening to podcasts. My goal this year is to consume as much knowledge and news as I can, and spending long amounts of time alone offered me the opportunity to do exactly that. No doorman guarded the packages, and once on a day that was already pretty bad, a chair I’d ordered got stolen. I cried about it and then asked Amazon for a refund. I had to start sending my laundry out, but I didn’t mind investing in luxuries that made my life more efficient.

But it also had its charms, and it wooed me in little ways. On winter afternoons a generous slice of sunlight would pore through the big windows, all three of which opened. The hardwood floor and exposed brick offered it character, and as I write this, I’m looking around, in love with the back-of-the-building quiet where you can still hear the sirens, but they’re not loud enough so that you feel like the police car drove right into your living room. The neighbors were good people, and in true Manhattan fashion, we never spoke except in grudging hallway acknowledgements, but we did carry each other’s packages to the mailboxes if we saw them lying outside.

Three months in, they put my surname against my apartment number on the intercom system downstairs. That made me feel a surge of joy and I did what every internet era child would do : pulled out my iPhone and took a photo. It was proof, proof that I had once lived in New York! That one of these pre-war apartments had belonged to me!

The building, on the outside at least, bore a stunning resemblance to old West Village, Carrie Bradshaw-esque charm. Two doors led to a set of stairs, and my romantically starved brain collected all the movie scenes that occur on building stoops and padded them together, wreaking havoc inside my head. Of course, no boys showed up with boomboxes, or flowers, but in their defense, I hadn’t invited them. I had stopped speaking to them altogether.

I chuckle about the fact that when I lived at home, under supervision, I would take any opportunity to sneak a boy into the house. I had so many close calls (sorry Mom). And now, when I live alone in a city that is much freer and faster than the one I was born in, I haven’t had a single person over, except that one friend on the first day.

There is something very sad but powerful about that, but mostly I’m glad that living alone taught me, by force, to enjoy my own company. To need no one else to eat meals with. To take off the day, alone, process its happenings in notebooks. To lull my brain back to sleep after I shook awake from a nightmare, and to decorate, not because I wanted to please visitors but because I wanted to live in a beautiful space even if I was the only one in it.

Now, I’ve spent countless hours, cleaning or reorganizing, consuming TV and books and academia and terrible lines from men on Hinge before I inevitably got frustrated and deleted the app and ghosted them.

I’ve built a world in this apartment, and when New York beats my ass which it does more frequently than I’d like, I know I have one place in the world to go and recuperate. I sleep well, for the most part. I have one person parties, and yesterday I found myself dancing in the kitchen, making a late night snack. And it made me realize that 6 months in, I’m happy here. Isn’t there a Lorde lyric that goes, “Romanticize a quiet life, there’s no place like my room?”

There’s no place like my room, but what surprises me more is that I never thought I’d find complete comfort in the silence that comes with having your own place. I always thought there would need to be somebody around, but maybe a part of that figuring it out as it happens bit in adulthood is also learning new things about who you are. I’m learning that I actually quite enjoy living alone, and I’m growing fonder of that feeling each day. I never would’ve known if I didn’t try it.

Yes, there’s something incredibly lonely about it all. I wake up some Saturday mornings and all I want is a cup of coffee and someone to talk to. But you find your remedies. You self soothe. You call friends and ask them about their lives.

Taking care of your home, inevitably, becomes a way to take care of yourself. And in the absence of anyone to take care of you, it is a necessary exercise in showing yourself that you deserve to be taken care of.