I want to pay rent so bad it makes me look stupid

    For reasons it would be too tedious to explain, this summer I find myself in house-hopping hell. Two weeks ago, it was an Airbnb in Boston. Last week, my aunt’s sofa in LA. This month, my freshman cousin’s two-bedroom apartment near Prudential while he's away, which I’m currently sharing with a family of three (his roommate's parents are in town). Then his lease is up at the end of June, so after that, it’s a roulette of couch surfing for the rest of the summer, everywhere from LA to New York to Allston, while I scramble to find a lease for September and all while starting a new job. 

   All this to say I’ve suddenly gained a lot of experience in figuring out the things I need to live, and the things I can live without (at least for the interim). I’m constantly experimenting with how much of myself I can put somewhere, weighing the realities of a looming expiration date and being in someone else’s home with my desire to briefly have a space I can call my own. 

    At the beginning of all this, I chose the things I thought I’d need for the summer, then relegated the rest to storage. That left me with six suitcases of summer essentials (I’ve never been good at packing light) all of which I lug around with me for easy access, and so far only one and a half of which I’ve actually ended up using.

    

    Every day, I find myself slowly carving out more space for myself here, whether it’s taking a little more space in the fridge (I have now established comfortable dominance over the vegetable crisper and a shelf) or tidying up my cousin’s bedroom to ostensibly make it easier for him to move but really so that I can forget someone else sleeps here (truly nothing more harrowing than finding half a strip of condoms in your teenage cousin’s bedside drawer). At every place I stay at, I grow my space a little every day, until it’s time for me to pack it all up and do it again somewhere new.

    Most days I’m okay with living out of 1.5 suitcases or sleeping on sofas or buying only enough groceries to last me half a week. There's a part of me that enjoys the little adventure I'm on, and it's been eye-opening to learn how little I really need, especially when laundry is available. The circumstances are what they are.

    

    But it doesn’t change the fact that I feel like I’m in a kind of stasis, unable to start my real adult life, unable to put roots down because I’m a perpetual intruder and guest. It doesn’t change the fact that every once in a while, I find myself wanting a home, a real one, for myself so bad that it physically hurts. I want my own kitchen. I want my own bed. I want my own sofa. I want to be able to throw away things that I think are trash without worrying that someone else kept them for a reason. I want to use pots and pans that are my own, to rearrange furniture, to have the option to take a baseball bat to everything or burn it all down because it’s mine and I can do what I want.

    I want to buy a dining table, goddamnit. 

    Until then, I’ll content myself with hiding away all my cousin’s Invisaligns under the bathroom sink (why would you just leave them exposed on the windowsill) and making enough room in the fridge for my Brita (they do not have one, and have been buying bottled water all semester. Sometimes I despair for teenage boys). By next month, things will undoubtedly be different, and I can’t wait to share. And in the words of our beloved professor, onward!

With teeth, love, and 4.5 suitcases of dead weight,

JC