home, where i wanted to go, home

[jazzfish]

My apartment is further from the skytrain than I'd like, the heating is uneven, and most importantly The Rent Is Too Damn High.

And yet I don't want to move.

Since leaving home in 1995 I've moved thirteen times. That's counting one dorm room, and one move from a basement to an attic, but not the places I lived for less than a month. Still. You'd think I'd be used to it by now.

So I think about packing everything into boxes again, and changing my address in a dozen places, and renting a truck, and just living somewhere different, and I start to ... not panic, not exactly. It's somewhere between "scared" and "just don't wanna."

Something about this apartment feels like home, like permanence, in a way that nothing else ever has. There's light, and space, and a sense of having chosen to be here.

And today in the too-bright autumn sunshine I saw a perfect V of Canada geese fly behind the hotel across the way.

I like it here.

Which doesn't make the rent any less Damn High.

Comments

[https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawkLBjyzIxon8jvozMuweRNOE6Vx9DtMyKg]

Rent notwithstanding, your apartment is beautiful. It's bright and open.

I hear ya about moving, too. I'm still not unpacked from the last move 13 years ago. I dare say I still have one or two boxes left from a move I made in '92 or '93...

[thanate]

This sounds like the sort of thing where maybe you should take up apartment-looking as an occasional hobby until you find a place perfect enough to *want* to move.

But good for you for finding somewhere you enjoy yourself. :)

[aamcnamara]

I hear ya. It's a great feeling to know I will be living in this same place for a calendar year--I don't even have to leave for Thanksgiving like I did in college--I will never have to go stay somewhere else unless I want to. For an entire year. And although we shall see how the heating bills turn out, I am kind of inclined to keep living here for a while, just because Not Moving sounds like such a very good thing right now.

[rainbowk.livejournal.com]

I've loved everywhere I've lived, for all sorts of reasons. Eventually, I had to ask, do I love it because I always live in fabulous places or because I have some internal push to love it and therefore always find something to love? Maybe it's both.

Your current apartment is amazing, it's true. And the process of moving is really kind of shitty and irritating, also true. All of it is true.

Still, this is Vancouver. There are lots of amazing places to live, with a view of the mountains, with light and space. You will still have chosen to live here. That can still be the powerful and transformative choice that you have made.