If you have an apartment in New York… you hold onto that apartment in New York. That’s just the way it goes. A spacious, vermin- and critter-free, affordable place to crash is really hard to come buy.

We moved into this apartment after being bounced around Brooklyn. Between the two of us, we had six apartments in 10 months. One of which we came home to find our kitten playing a literal game of cat and mouse in. Eek! Lesbians that we were, we decided pretty early on to consolidate and fight the big city together. After looking at way too many places on Craigslist that claimed to be in Prospect Heights, but were really more in Bedstuy, we happened upon the third floor of a brownstone that had cute tile in the kitchen and a nook that could be our office. The old lady in the basement, who I thought to be a little off with her twitching and tight pants made us some spaghetti casserole and gave us some Kool-Aid. We hadn’t had spaghetti casserole before and it had been years since we’d had grape Kool-Aid. My girlfriend squealed with delight over “the home-cooked food that we were eating.” The nutty lady in the basement said, “You feel good to me. I’ma tell her to rent it to ya’ll.”

Kooky as she was, her word worked and we moved into the apartment, undependable incomes and all. Shocked that anyone would rent to us, we delighted in our new home. We painted the walls poorly, but we painted them. We commandeered furniture. We had people over and planned our future — sometimes to avoid dealing with our present.

We packed our lives into blue bins and tucked them into the closet. We found great subletters and then not-so-great subletters. We knew that we would be back. During the break-up, we never really talked about the apartment or our stuff. We hadn’t lived in there together for nearly two years and we haven’t been a couple for almost a year — there has been quite a bit of distance and almost enough time between us.

The two hopeful women who found each other in “the big city” have both moved on with different people and our lives are so far apart now. The apartment was the last vestige of our relationship. Our lives and our past still tucked away in blue bins.

I sold the treadmill; I gave away our bed; I put the majority of our things out on the street for strangers to pick through and value and devalue. Nine industrial-strength black bags full of our lives have been set out on the curb and picked up by the New York Department of Sanitation. I sat on the floor yesterday, saddened by the emptiness and the echo in the rooms. Finally, my friends came and got me. We took a couple of things down to my car and came back inside and sat on the floor.

“This was a cute little place,” her voice echoed. “Yeah,” I said.
“It’s hard isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“You feel like it’s the right thing?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, let’s go. Do you need a minute alone?”

I shook my head no and walked out. I got to the bottom of the steps and realized I left the light on in the hallway. I ran back upstairs, said goodbye and turned off the light.

If you have an apartment in New York, you keep your apartment in New York… until you let go of it.