I’ve Come To A Decision

This past Christmas in my apartment

It’s midnight and I’m laying half on my bed and half on the floor eating a Boston Cream Snack Pie I brought home from Speedway. I should be asleep, but my mind is racing too hard for that to happen. Earlier tonight I spent twenty minutes awkwardly aiming my iPhone flashlight at the bottom of my dad’s foot trying to find a splinter or tiny piece of something neither of us could actually see. Whatever is in there is apparently small enough to stay hidden but painful enough to make him hobble around the house like he stepped on a nail. Meanwhile I’m upstairs snacking on a cheap boxed pie trying to make sense of a decision I’ve finally admitted I probably can’t avoid anymore.

I can’t afford to keep the apartment upstairs.

Actually, even writing that sentence fills me with a mix of dread and resistance because I haven’t officially told the landlord yet. I’m planning to give thirty days notice on June 1st, but there is still some part of me holding out for a miracle. Who knows what can happen in four days. I thought the VA caregiving grant would give me some financial freedom. Instead I kept crunching numbers trying to convince myself I needed a little more time before making the decision. Maybe I could pick up more shifts. Maybe one of the half finished projects floating around my life would finally turn into income. Maybe something unexpected would happen and loosen the pressure a little. The apartment only costs me $500 a month, which somehow makes this feel worse.

Eventually I ran out of ways to rearrange the same numbers.

Still, I’m emotional about it. Over the last couple years the apartment became the one place in my life that still felt like it belonged entirely to me. It’s where I drank coffee in the morning. It’s where I wrote. It’s where books piled up beside the bed and projects stayed half finished without somebody needing the space for something else. It’s where I could step out of the shower and walk naked while figuring out what clothes were clean enough.

The apartment gave me privacy, yeah, but there’s something deeper and more destabilizing that I’m struggling with. Having my own apartment I could still feel like an adult man with a life of my own. It’s a place I could write, make art, leave notebooks open, hang artwork, record online classes, sit on the deck at midnight, and still feel connected to the possibility that some parts of me hadn’t completely disappeared. Maybe even the faint distant memory of a sexual life, although if I’m being honest that part has been on life support for quite a while now. But still there was the possibility of physical intimacy. The possibility that maybe someday I would actually make a friend I’d want to invite over.

I’ve recently recorded a few thirty minute online classes for my website that I feel really good about. I still haven’t published them because every time I start moving in that direction something else happens. A technical issue. Self doubt. Caregiving stuff. And lately the guys replacing the siding have basically been hanging off the roof pounding and drilling every time I try to record another one, which honestly feels like a pretty accurate metaphor for my life these days.

The strange thing is that I never imagined myself growing old here. I don’t particularly like living in Western Pennsylvania. I’ve known for years that when my parents are gone, I’ll leave too. I don’t know where I’ll go, but I know I won’t stay here. This was never supposed to be permanent. Yet somewhere along the way it became home anyway.

The room I’m moving into downstairs is barely big enough for a bed and a dresser. Every time I stand in there I have the same thought: where does the rest of my life go? Downstairs everything blends together. The television. The interruptions. The responsibilities. The noise. Upstairs there is still some separation between caregiving and the rest of me.

I keep coming back to the deck because so much of my actual life happened out there. There’s a table with a faded blue umbrella and four chairs, although the other three almost never get used. My older brother and sister in law sit there occasionally when they visit, but most of the time it’s just me. My dad can’t really make it up the stairs anymore, so over the years the deck became this little space where I could still feel separate from everything downstairs. I’ve spent countless mornings and nights out there drinking coffee, talking on the phone, staring at the trees and the little crik, or sitting in a winter coat because I wanted to be outside more than I wanted to be warm.

And then there’s the weird reality that somebody else is eventually going to live upstairs. Some stranger. Maybe they’ll be great. Maybe they won’t. Maybe they’ll stomp around overhead while I’m downstairs trying to write. Maybe they’ll sit on the deck drinking coffee where I’ve spent years drinking mine. That’s the part that keeps catching me off guard. Emotionally, I’ve made the decision, but some part of me is clearly still hanging on. Still waiting for some miracle that lets me keep this little corner of my life a little longer.

P.S. We finally found the culprit. A tiny piece of glass. He’s back to normal.

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