The National — Apartment Story
I used to live on the third floor of my apartment building in Gainesville, right in the back corner; that meant I got an extra window in my bedroom. The building was brick and tall, alternately sweltering or chilly depending on the time of year. The day I moved in had to be the hottest day to ever occur in Florida and I instantly regretted wearing jeans. As soon as my parents and friends had helped me finish moving furniture, I locked the door and literally peeled off all of my clothes. I cranked the AC to a frosty temperature and spent three hours lying nude on the carpet, my muscles twitching slightly from carrying boxes and moving a queen-sized bed up three flights of stairs since it wouldn’t fit in the elevator. Soon I grew cold and I felt myself pull my legs up to my chest for a while, rubbing my calves with my hands. I got up, turned off the air, and pulled on just a long sleeved t-shirt and stood at the big window in the living room. That apartment would never be the right temperature or the right fit, the beads of sweat dripping down the back of my neck as my lips shivered.
I painted the walls colors a 1950’s housewife might have chosen: pale, icy aqua for the living room and a rose called Sweet Sixteen for the bedroom. I had a Wes Anderson yellow in mind for the bathroom but didn’t end up living there long enough for that. I put up my wall-sized map of the world on the living room wall and hung photos of my mother and myself as babies. I had a multicolored chandelier and long sheer curtains. My mother bought me, the prodigal daughter with no green thumb, a petunia plant in a tiny pot. I placed it in the window and it grew beautifully until I left it unattended over winter break and I came back to it withered and thirsty. I bought an oversized black and white armchair and spent 95% of my time reading books in it naked more than anything else. The man I was sleeping with would come over and I’d cook for him and read to him since we didn’t have much to say; I hardly went out with him. I called out sick from work at the library a few times per week in order to finish the last few chapters of whatever I was reading, bare legs hanging over the side of the chair. I burrowed my way into this space and yet I never fit, my limbs seeming to awkwardly stick out of the place, elbows out the windows and knees unable to bend. Have you ever felt this way about a place? It seemed to be suffocating me and anyone I brought home with me but I couldn’t leave either. The only time I felt I was really inside that apartment was when I was almost entirely outside of it.
There was a day when I noticed that the screen in my bedroom window had disappeared. It wasn’t inside my apartment and when I looked out the window, I saw nothing below. It was a mystery. I thought nothing of it for weeks. I continued waking up early every day despite having gone to bed at ungodly late hours, my body running on little sleep and food at that time. My body grew lean and somehow more alert with that spartan diet of what I couldn’t even identify then as depression. I had tea and toast every morning but barely finished either. I held the plate and mug in my hands as I stepped out of the kitchen one day and noticed the window. I put these things down and stepped into underwear and a t-shirt. I opened the window and placed my breakfast on the sill. I stepped onto the edge and sat down, swinging my legs over the edge, my heels meeting the cool brick wall. I grabbed my tea and sipped it slowly in the damp morning air. I rubbed at my eye, smudged with eyeliner from the day before, and looked at the world from a place higher than I was used to. It seemed smaller from even three stories up, and I watched the world begin to go about its day. Restaurants beginning to cook for lunch, sleepy employees unlocking shops and setting up. I wasn’t aware of the world waking up without me outside.
I scooted my ass forward to lean further out my window. I grabbed a cigarette and lighter from the windowsill and lit it, exhaling slowly. My legs swung as I smoked. I kept imagining that if I pushed my feet against the brick and pushed off, I would definitely fly. My mind knew that this was definitely not the case but in the haze of morning, when my cigarette-filled mouth longed to climb back into bed with your sleepy one, it seemed like the most natural thought in the world. I leaned my head against the window frame and watched a tall, awkward guy riding his bike. He looked up at me as he passed and kept looking over his shoulder. He smiled. I felt myself blush down to my toes and I tried to look cool, covering my grin with the hand holding my cigarette. I soon slipped back into my apartment and back into bed, curling myself around my sheets. Maybe things weren’t as suffocating as I once thought, if I could just get outside myself every now and then.
I swung my legs outside my window every morning, drinking my tea, eating toast with blackberry jam, and smoking one cigarette. The same boy rode by on his bicycle every morning and we smiled at each other shyly. We never spoke but it was enough just to smile and occasionally wave. I was still sitting on the edge of my ledge then and appropriately, my life. I hadn’t the strength to push off from that wall, gravity be damned. It takes a while to extract yourself from the places you lock, wall yourself into, the key not an object or person in fact but some sort of hidden seam in the structure that you have to maneuver to get out. Those are the hardest places to get out of because you build them to protect your heart, yourself. It’s terrifying to be free but it’s worse to be the one building the walls.
