All of my New York City Apartments (Part 2)

After a decade of living in the city, I'm reflecting on all of the places I've called home.

I’m so glad you all enjoyed last week’s post so much. I have so many more stories to share – this is just the beginning! Please enjoy apartment #4, apartment #5 and apartment #6, and let me know your thoughts or specific topics you’d like me to cover in the posts to come.

Apartment #4 – Bushwick/Stockholm St. ($1,000)

It was my first apartment living with a significant other, and I cried the entire first week we lived together.

It wasn’t because of him, at least not that I was aware of. It just felt like a piece of me was dying – I was loved, but I was not free.

The relationship itself was full of more joy than I knew what to do with, but he was nearly nine years older and ready to settle down. Deep down, there was a part of me that knew I was giving something up in order to make him happy.

I wasn’t sure about moving in together and I wasn’t sure about the apartment itself, but he never wavered. His confidence in us and our future was intoxicating – I agreed to almost anything he suggested, hoping that clarity would rub off on me.

We moved into our railroad apartment in February, and we made it a home.

Our days were filled with home cooked meals, bottles of red wine, endless games of Rummikub, and so much laughter. We even started fostering from local animal shelters, our home an endless revolving door of dogs who just wanted to be loved.

And then came Simon.

I could write an entire book about Simon’s existence and the way he shook up my entire life, but I’ll save that for another time. For now, let’s just say that Simon became my entire world, and he turned that apartment into my most sacred space to date.

The building we lived in had six apartments, and five of them were taken up by one family – aunts and uncles and cousins and siblings. There were birthday parties, christenings, and family arguments, the walls shaking with reggaeton most hours of the day. But we didn’t mind – it was Brooklyn, and it was the energy we craved, even as the energy between the two of us was dwindling.

Because the truth was this – despite how much we loved each other, I craved constant motion, and he liked being sedentary. I wanted to go, he wanted to stay. Suddenly our age difference was peeking its head through our crisp, white bed sheets – when we met, we saw eye to eye, but I just kept going. Suddenly, I was two years older and two feet taller.

We broke up the day after Valentine’s Day. I packed a suitcase and took Simon to stay at my parent’s house in New Jersey, craving a home cooked meal and their boundless affection.

It was March, 2020. You can guess the next part.

Apartment #5 – Bushwick/Jefferson St. ($1,100)

I stayed at my childhood home for six weeks at the start of the pandemic.

My days were spent how most were – long walks, quality time with my family, zoom happy hours with friends, and being glued to my TV, watching Andrew Cuomo update us on the death count in New York City. Things weren’t getting better, but time was still passing. I knew I had to get back to Brooklyn.

And, what would you know, the universe listened.

I got a text from my oldest friend, Megan. There was a room opening in her Bushwick apartment because one of her roommates was moving back home due to COVID.

We had a long talk about living together – Megan grew up right next door to me, and operated more as a sister than a friend. Our parents were best friends, our brothers were best friends, and we were best friends, so we wanted to make sure living together didn’t ruin our dynamic.

We agreed to give it a chance – at the end of the day, she needed to fill a room and I needed a place to live. Living with strangers at the height of a pandemic wasn’t really an option, so, after 20 years of friendship, we were now roommates.

That apartment became a sanctuary in the absolute worst of times. It was three of us against the world – our friendship as our only outlet. We didn’t have bars to rely on, dates to talk about, or offices to escape to. We had each other, and that was it.

We found moments of joy during true devastation in New York City. We’d bring tumblers of wine to the rooftop, dog-eared books in our hands, and listen to ambulance after ambulance wail by. The hospital down the street had camps set up because they were at capacity, freezers full of people who didn’t make it, and all we could do was stay inside.

And we did – we spent our time watching Twilight movie marathons, cooking elaborate dinners, and playing games in which we’d get a little too competitive. We took baths and attempted to do yoga in our tiny bedrooms. We talked and talked and talked. The world fell apart around us, but at least we had each other.

Dating apps became our greatest source of entertainment. We’d swipe right on men and have flirty banter, satiating a deep desire for romantic connection. None of it was taken seriously, until all of a sudden, it was. Megan and I fell for people at exactly the same time, almost to the day.

Dating was different then, of course. We couldn’t meet in person, so FaceTime became our greatest resource – we both spent hours a day talking to these men for nearly a month straight. 

Megan and I spent that New Year’s Eve together, and we decided to dress up. It had been months since we had a reason to look hot, and we took full advantage. I put on strappy black heels and my brightest red lipstick, counting down to what I hoped would be the start of a much better year.

A few days later, we decided to meet our guys in person, both ‘dates’ looking very different than they’d ever looked before. The first dates went well, as did the second, and the third.

Eventually the five of us became a pod, and we were absolutely exhilarated by having an additional two people in our dynamic. Everything was more fun and more interesting. Everything was accelerated, too – my relationship progressed at unprecedented speed, and after six months, we decided to move in together. 

Apartment #6 – Greenpoint ($1,200)

It’s hard to remember my reasoning exactly, but I think it went something like this:

I was very much in love with the man of my dreams, my lease was ending anyway, and I really didn’t want to live in Bushwick anymore. After years of living there, it had become a graveyard of memories from my youth. I was starting to feel like the oldest and least cool person in a ten block radius.

Jacob was all in. But there was a catch – his childhood best friend (and his dog) were moving to Brooklyn, and Jacob already had plans to live with him. In our minds, the three of us living together would be like a TV show – cooking dinner on weeknights, having parties with all our friends, long walks with the dogs together – so we started looking for three bedroom apartments, and found a perfect one in Greenpoint.

When we first toured it, there was a line around the block just to get inside. It was a three floor walk up, but it was newly renovated – beautiful stainless steel appliances, AND a washer/dryer. The enormous living room windows let light spill into every corner of the apartment, and each of us would have our own full bathroom. We submitted an application that day, and somehow got approved over the dozens of other New Yorkers who were hoping to move in.

It was by far the best apartment I’d ever lived in, and on the outside it felt like life was really coming together.

But internally, things were falling apart.

In relationships, I had always been the one who had my shit together. I never had to reflect on myself because it felt like my partners always had more to work on than I did. When I met Jacob, it was like looking in a mirror – suddenly, I was dating my equal. Suddenly, I was dating someone who’d say, ‘I love you, but you did this and it hurt me.’ Suddenly, I was dating someone who required me to look at my own actions and take accountability.

I had a hard time with that.

We triggered each other – we were always in fight or flight, not knowing whether the other person would just get up one day and leave. No matter how much we communicated, we could not get through to each other. It felt like climbing up a mountain, and we were never able to reach the top. He was in therapy and begged me to start, but I kept putting it off. I wasn’t ready to face the parts about me that I kept hidden under the bed.

He fought for the relationship, I did not. I packed my things one frigid weekend in February while he was away with friends.

Before I left, I hugged our roommate in the kitchen, tears falling down my face. He comforted me, promising we’d see each other again. Deep down, I knew I was being a coward, but I didn’t see any other way out. 

My dad picked me up after the movers left, Simon sitting on my lap the entire drive back to New Jersey. 

Stay tuned for the last part next week!