Listen to the article:
I'm moving tomorrow. This will be the second home I call my own; away from my parents, away from my old life, away from everything I used to know and think I know now.
My apartment looks like the inside of my brain. A mishmash of posters and pictures and records and old Nancy Drew books. Trinkets and candles and Muppets memorabilia. An apartment fit for a child — or me, I guess. Sometimes I think my apartment looks this way because I relish a childhood I didn’t get to have. But that doesn't matter now, because tomorrow, I'm leaving.
As I pack up and leave the life I've come to know so well, I reflect on the lives that have come before me. If I were my mother, I'd have a kid in two years. If I were my grandmother, I would have had a kid two years ago. I remain childless. But in a way, I am both my mother and grandmother. I am the experiences they lived. I'm the child of children who didn’t know what they were doing. I definitely don’t know what I’m doing.
I've learned a lot about myself living alone. I've learned I don’t really like living alone. I've learned that maybe some things are better left unsaid. I've learned to manage my illnesses. Or maybe I haven't. Maybe I'm just stuck, forced to deal with the world's harsh reality. There are car payments and rent payments and insurance payments all due seemingly at the same time. There's no time to be ill.
Then again, illness makes time for itself. I remember when my mother's illness reared its ugly head. Despite her four children, despite our tiny apartment's way-too-high rent. There was no time then just as there is no time now. There's never enough time.
I remember when I first moved in. I had just gotten out of the hospital, and was in desperate need of a change. I had put my life on pause for two months, and it was time to get back to normalcy. I got a job. I moved. I went back to school. I desperately clawed my way back into some semblance of a life. I think I found one. What if it all goes away? What if such a big change knocks me off course? What if I end up where I was this time last year?
Despite my musings, I know the change will do me good. I'm lonely. Most of the time, I just sit in my house, rethinking the day. Going over every little thing I've said and done, analyzing and re-analyzing and spinning around and around until my head hurts. An empty apartment is no place for an already ill mind.
-
It's tomorrow. I've moved. I've left my old life behind in favor of a new one, and I'm scared. Once again, I don't know what I'm doing. But maybe the world will end tomorrow, and just like that, life will snap closed. Or maybe I'll be happy.
Edited by Savannah Dagupion, Leah Mesquita and Audrey Eagerton.
This story is part of The Generation Issue, which was released on December 4, 2024. See the entire publication here.
Reach the reporter at cageare@asu.edu and follow @notevilclaire on X.
Like State Press Magazine on Facebook, follow @statepressmag on X and Instagram and read our releases on Issuu.
