September 26, 2014

it's been a slice.

I lived in that little two-bedroom apartment in that little three-storey walk-up on Spence Street in West Broadway for almost four years.

It's seen me through a lot of things

relationships
jobs
friendships
university

so many beginnings and so many ends that I've lost count.

I made it my own. I painted, I hung up my art, I whispered my secrets and mourned my tragedies within those plaster walls.

That apartment wasn't just a place that I lived. It was somewhere where I shared my life with someone else, and it marks the final "moving on" step in my life. It felt good -cathartic, even- but there was still a piece of my heart that felt like there was a lead weight pulling it down to my toes.

I walked through the rooms, soaking in their emptiness.

The living room, totally barren, with paint flecks on the floor from when my ex and I put together and painted our own furniture because we didn't have the money to buy anything new. The window where Ford and Toulouse used to sit when they lived together. All the good times shared with friends in that room.

The old bedroom that we once shared, now the new tenant's room, where I used to wake up and look at the sun through the vines that crept across the window. Where I woke up with a smile on my face so many times and where, towards the end, I woke up with dread in my heart. I cried myself to sleep in that room too many times to count.

The old office. So trendy and cool and well-organized. The hours I spent blogging, writing papers in university, or just nerding out over YouTube videos or some weird post on Reddit.

I've sold the desk where I used to sit.

The kitchen, with it's awful storage and cobbled-together shelving. The large, gaping space on the wall where my ex pulled the floating bar we'd installed off the wall in a fit of rage after I moved out. I didn't like being there in that kitchen, looking at the evidence of that side of him. I didn't stay in there long.

I cried a bit, and John held me. It helped.

When I stepped out and locked the door for the last time I felt light headed. Like when you're in an airplane and it's taking off and your heart is floating in your chest and your whole body feels like weightless. I floated down the hallway and left trails of tears behind me.

I'll still visit the Greysolon from time to time, as I know people who live there, but that was the last time that I'll walk up to suite 17 and turn my key in that lock. The last time that I'll be bombarded with feelings and emotions and that strange feeling of not-quite-right that it took on once I lost a lover and acquired a roommate.

It's good, but also different, and strange. Life is like that, I suppose.

So goodbye, Greysolon, and my dumpy old apartment that, for a while, was something truly beautiful.

xox

yr girl Shaner