The food is out of the fridge. The vacuum is all packed up. The rooms emptied. The bathrooms cleaned out. The mailbox checked. Everything is all out. Now all that’s left is to leave the keys on the counter.
The keys on the counter.
The door shut.
I’m out.
Seeing it all empty was strange. For one, it was clean. Very, very clean! Floors vacuumed, bathroom tiles scrubbed, and surface areas wiped down. I never cleaned that often or that thoroughly. But it was more than just it being clean. Seeing it all empty felt like it wasn’t mine anymore. I mean, it’s not mine. I moved out. But it felt like I was an outsider peeking in at someone else’s life.
It’s been over a week since I stopped sleeping in that apartment, but I kept going back to clean or pack or clean more or pack more. Back and forth, back and forth. One car load, one car trip. Another car load, another trip. The more I packed up and took out, the more the space became foreign to me. I was physically taking my belongings out, but I was also slowly erasing all the parts of my life that came with it.
Each time I told myself it could be my last time. This could be the last moment in this apartment. Of course it wasn’t because I own too much stuff and packed way too little to begin with. But even though I was emotionally preparing myself for it to be the end, it wasn’t that bad.
For the most part, all the water works came prior to the move or the day of. At least once a day my entire last week I cried. Quick, short cries. Slow, buildup of sadness cries. Then the day of I cried between moves. First we moved the plants, then I cried about there being no sight of my little garden. Then someone else helped moved the kitchen stuff, and afterwards I cried over the place that held so many memories. Last was everything else, and when he took the bed apart and undid the frame I cried thinking about how the last time- when that bed was being set up there, it was so different.
I thought I exhausted all my tears.
But every time I walked back into my room, something tugged at my heart and out came those tears.
Because I would walk into my room and there would be no bed. Not the thing I spent every single day on. Not the thing I use more frequently and consistently than anything else in my apartment. It was my comfortable, warm bed, and it wasn’t there anymore.
And what I made it mean was that I wasn’t there anymore. My life there. My existence in that time and in that space just poofed up in the air and disappeared. There was nothing concrete that kept me grounded to that place, and so it’s as if that place never happened.
As if that entire year and a half never happened. The homemade dumplings were never cooked. The rounds of Exploding Kittens were never played. The long, sleepy mornings staying in bed never took place. None of it. It’s all gone now. It’ll never be like that again. I’ll never have that again.
I’m too sentimental and I know it. And part of being so sentimental and attached and emotional is that I keep things, and those physical trinkets are reminders of a time or a place or an experience. So that even if I’m not in that place or I’m not doing that thing, I can hold onto it and keep a part of it with me.
So for a very long time that apartment in itself was a reminder of the relationship I had while in that space. So long as I lived there, that physical space could be a reminder of the friendship I had. The friend who helped me through a pandemic when everyone else near me seemed to disappear. The friend who made me realize I’m not invisible. The friend who I could trust with my whole heart. But now I’m not in that apartment, and now I don’t have that reminder. And I don’t have that friend either. So there is nothing that keeps me connected to that very special season of my life.
It’s all vanished away as if it never even happened.
I’m out.