On Homemaking
When I was eight, a young woman died alone in her apartment. And when I was nine, and ten, and every year after, several women a year, I’m sure, forever. I overheard these kinds of things on the news, or else from a group of adults talking in tones of fear and regret, tones which I understood early in life and never wanted my name to be coated in. “I don’t want to live alone,” I told to my mom, hot tears running down my small, freckled face. “You won’t,” she answered, perplexed, “you’ll never have to.”
*
The building was old and clunky: a wide staircase leading to the porch that no one used, a small, vestibuled entryway with brass mailboxes, full of credit card offers and coupons, pizza menus. The day I moved in, it was 99 degrees, and a friend came to help, so did my parents. We sweat, all of us. Inside my apartment, whose walls I painted orange and mint and Grecian blue, there was a door that couldn’t open, that presumably led to the basement. There was a spackled- up window that seemed like an old pulley system connecting upstairs to downstairs, although the building was so changed by that point, that I could not orient myself to its former turn-of-the- century life. I could only gather bits of information I had read about the neighborhood and these gigantic old houses split awkwardly into apartments. The bathroom, faded white to yellow, was dirty, no matter how much I scrubbed it. The place seemed haunted. Mostly by my longing.
*
To be single and live alone as a woman in your thirties means holding an entire space. This is something to be revered, though I don’t think society knows it yet. The way I wake up with myself, remain faithful to small, private rituals, witness my own depression, the paces of my life. Each day I appear to myself in the painted gold mirror I hang in my bedroom and do not turn away. I was 31 and had previously lived in cities where having roommates was always a financial necessity. I left New York many years earlier, partially after realizing I wasn’t going to get into a relationship and couldn’t take living with new roommates all the time, and couldn’t take hearing the roommates I loved, falling in love through the apartment walls, thin as razors, and couldn’t afford to have a one-bedroom apartment without having a two-income household.
*
In Philadelphia, I dated, introduced people to my life, my apartment, my cat. I was messy; I’ve always been messy. One date joked how much they admired my way of cleaning up—piling everything into laundry baskets that sat on the floor, something they didn’t know I only did when I might want the person coming over to fuck me. Another told me he liked the colors of my walls, asked, “is this ok,” and then, “is this ok,” as I raised my arms over my head so that he could take off my shirt. I once said an awkward good-bye to a date outside of the corner bar down the street from my apartment, thinking he wasn’t interested in me. Back home, I sat on my dirt-moss loveseat and texted, teasing him about how he crossed his arms when I tried to hug him, a last-ditch effort to flirt. He texted back immediately. He didn’t think I was interested in him. Come over, I answered. Bring beer.
Beautifully articulated fears–of loneliness rather than aloneness–as well as successes–living on one’s own, defining one’s space and therefore one’s self.