“I keep saying, I’ll do that when I’m settled, she said to me, except I’m starting to realize I may never be settled.”
I can relate - my life is a constant state of unsettled right now. We keep trying to make a phone call happen but things keep getting in the way. I’m so up and down about the phone these days, even old friends who call I send to voice mail. I need them – probably now more than ever, but I’m so tired – too tired to repeat the story of my feelings again. Where I’m at, how’s the new job? Life without him? The new place? What’s it like? How are you?
Some ask and I hear the hints of jealousy in their voices, daydreaming about leaving their spouses, their children their comfortable homes. Others have a veil of pity, a poor her, ugh, I’m glad that’s not me, sniff about them.
I’ll tell you how I am.
I am fucking cold. My new apartment has windows in every room - walls of windows. Windows and sunlight that seduced me hard at first viewing. Look at all this light! A corner unit! It’s perfect.
But the windows, like this beautiful building, are decades old. Maybe, likely not from when the building was built in 1922 but maybe close? Because these fucking windows are drafty. The wall heater blows hot air into the hallway, the cat is afraid of the space heater I bought for the living room, and the bedroom heater runs too hot.
So most days I’m thinking about the temperature in my apartment – not that I am newly single after over a decade of being partnered, not about how much I am dreading dating again, not about if I can do this new job, not about my loneliness or singleness or the newness of every single thing in my life right now.
I’m mostly thinking about the central heat in our old apartment, and how much my cat George loved the carpets there but how dirty they probably were and how happy I am that he has hardwood floors and all this sunlight from these old windows which – are sparkling clean and so charming – but George doesn’t seem to appreciate these windows - maybe he’s mad at them too. He’s found a very cozy place to sleep all day long - on top of a box of cookbooks I haven’t unpacked yet, hidden between my dresses. He spends his days sleeping in there in what I imagine is a closet packed with the scents of our old apartment – the one with ugly brown wall-to-wall carpeting and central heat and too much dust and lots of love.
He better appreciate these windows this summer, maybe by then, we both will.
✨These Windows✨