I was caught breathless tonight, in the throbbing, hollow space between May and June. My calendar was all filled up with black eyeliner Xs and I was watching the movie Her. And I caught myself in a moment of an extreme need to keep you, a sharp pain at the thought of leaving you behind in thirty-three days.
It's because I created myself within these walls.
I built them up and stripped them down and screamed against their whiteness and cried into the mattress of this futon. I laughed into the pregnant black silence and talked to myself because I was learning how to live alone. I burned things on the stove and broke the microwave. I learned how to make meals for one and how to taste them without someone sitting opposite. I learned the value of staring out the window to a star-pricked sky and how to notice the subtle shades of violet in the twilight. I learned how the moon cycles and the nuances in the rainbow watercolours of the sun sets and rises.
I wrote novels here and made soulmates here. I fell into other humans in this room and I learned how to hold myself. I learned how to fall asleep in the darkness and how to listen for the lullabies of the pipes and the whir of the fridge. I papered the walls with maps of cities I'd seen while living here and strung photos and fairy lights across the walls and ceiling. I piled books to be surrounded by words that brought me comfort in my solitude and I nestled into the alcove of Paris I had created. I finally had somewhere all my own, somewhere completely me.
Perhaps it is because I bled myself into the paint, perhaps it is because I carved out tiny pieces of my heart and embedded the shards into the wooden beams but I feel as if I am leaving a part of myself behind in this studio apartment. And I am. Because I grew up with this place, in this place. I became comfortable with myself.
And I will miss having a place of my own, all to myself. And I know there will be others, but they will all surely pale in comparison to the first, fleeting love affair with a tiny maid's quarters in a Parisian attic. To sitting on a slate grey rooftop and watching the sun set behind the Eiffel Tower. I will take some parts of this with me when I leave, some integral parts I have fabricated from my time here, but other parts I must leave behind. The heavy parts, the parts too big to fit inside my suitcase. And this is only to make room for the new pieces I will find in the new places I will call home.
Because there will be other homes.
But this was my first.
And oh, what a home it was.
