Past Apartments > Past Loves

Project 365, Day 139/365

I didn’t have many serious, solidified love interests before Charles. We’ve been together so long that as friends or people I meet talk about past loves, I can’t relate that much. What I do have, though, at least as a grown person, is past loves in the form of apartments. Even the places I hated while living in them, like my very first apartment in Deerfield Beach, Florida, in a big rental development that shared a wall with a Super Target, I look back so fondly on now. The way I tend to care for my homes, they truly feel like past relationships.

It’s like I left a part of myself there when I moved, on to the next, and they left a part of themselves in me, and I love that. I started writing a post today on chopping vegetables, and it led me to telling a story about how I used to come home from my very stressful job at a design magazine, and I re-centered myself by smashing potatoes and finely dicing onions. But then I was immediately transported to that kitchen, with its white cabinets, black granite countertops, bright yellow walls and ceiling (a landlord choice I begrudged greatly but eventually just saw past), and my insides warmed up the way yours might thinking of a past love. I can still feel the cold tile on my bare feet.

That little apartment was my second home in Boca Raton, the last place I’d live in all by myself before Charles brought in his two pairs of boat shoes, three sets of jeans and all those pens and notebooks he sketches in. The last place I cooked for one, so if any given night called for a lazy plate of pickles and crackers and cheese, so be it.

I remember when I first walked through it. My friend and I jetted over to it on a lunch break, and I immediately hated the place. The building itself looked like a Florida timeshare—long, tall and narrow buildings with all the doors outside. The Florida Intracoastal waterway ran through it and alongside it, and what would become my apartment after some nudging from my friend who tagged along, overlooked the bobbing boat docks and pool below.

The floors were beige, large-format tile, the ceilings were weirdly yellow in the kitchen and powder bath up front. The main bathroom looked like something out of a Golden Girls episode, and the closets were basically non-existent.

What’s not to like, you might be wondering? It was just a vibe at the time, I suppose. The layout was the most basic “apartment” layout we all know: open the door and there’s the kitchen to the right, then the dining room that fed into a small living room, bedroom and bathroom through a door to the left. The floors were beige, large-format tile, the ceilings were weirdly yellow in the kitchen and powder bath up front. The main bathroom looked like something out of a Golden Girls episode, and the closets were basically non-existent. But the kitchen was mostly updated, it was in my budget, it was clean, quiet, safe. I’d come to learn I was the youngest person in the building by decades. Half of the year, the property was so quiet and empty because all the snow birds headed back up north in the blazing heat of the Florida summer.

“Arlyn, you have to get this apartment. You’re foolish if you don’t,” I remember my friend saying. She was mostly so sweet and tender, so for her to take a firm line with me, I listened. She had come with me to see numerous other places, and I had a complaint about them all, unless I couldn’t afford it…then it was great. In retrospect, I would have been silly to walk away from that apartment, so I’m glad I smartened up and took it. Once I got in all my furniture and decor, it wasn’t half bad.

It took a solid few months for it to feel like home. The freight train ran on the other side of the building, so I’d constantly be woken up in the middle of the night by the loud horns and clanking of metal wheels on metal train tracks. When it’d come by in the middle of the day or earlier on in the evening, I’d have to dig around for the remote to crank up the volume. That train was the bane of my existence until my baby nephews came to visit and stood on my balcony, mesmerized by the train as it chugged along. Train watching from six floors up became a ritual on their visits. I can still see their little round faces, eyes lit up by the wonder of a long locomotive, boxcars stacked high, horn blaring to signal its presence. I’ll forever hold those eyes in my memory and my heart, even when their voices start cracking with puberty.

I had so many highs in that apartment. It was where I lived when Charles and I got engaged. He lived a few hours north of me, so we still had the excitement of weekend visits where I’d plan elaborate breakfasts and living room picnics. It was where I lived in a very low moment of my life that I won’t go into. When I didn’t know how to get out of bed from sadness, that little apartment was my companion.

I remember all the shows I binged into the night in that living room, on my little gray tufted velvet sofa from Macy’s. It sat atop my black and white chevron rug I bought with so much pride when I was furnishing my first solo apartment.

There were the weekend afternoon rain showers I’d watch through the tall sliding glass doors that made up the left wall of my living room, looking out to the waterways, the swaying boats. I’d sit there, looking out into the building that faced me, wondering what other people’s lives were like…making up stories in my head about who they were.

Those tile floors I hated were my friend when I hand-painted Kelly green stripes on a set of plain white curtains for my bedroom. They framed my Hemnes IKEA desk that I literally never actually sat at. It just collected all my crap, and a bunch of dust.

Nothing will compare to pulling into my parking spot under the shaded tree (full of spiders…that infested my car…a story for another day), and instead of heading straight for the elevator, I’d meander over to the edge of the water that sat below the concrete ledge there, watching boats go by, feeling the breeze and the warm sun on my skin. Man, I didn’t take enough advantage of that while I had it, but isn’t that how life is?

All past loves have their pitfalls, however. Mine? Oh, it was a doozie. You see, my front door, unfortunately, was directly across from the trash shoot, and if you know anything about Florida, you can only imagine that means one thing: cockroaches. Good lord the cockroaches. I feel itchy just typing that. The slight gap underneath my door was like a sign that blinked “Come on in, the water’s fine!” and I didn’t smarten up and seal things fast enough to not have my fair share of trauma.

But just as I hear childbirth can be, you forgot the bad and remember only the good. I ended up living there three years, and by the time Charles and I were ready to move out for a larger condo that better suited our needs, it was like I was saying goodbye to an old friend.

To this day, I still miss that place, though mostly for what it stood for in that time of my life. Who I was when I lived there. It was the turning point of adulthood for me. Thank you, little apartment on the sixth floor, for being part of my story. Loud train, hideous bathroom, and all.

See you tomorrow, FOAS.