Going Rogue

So two weeks in and I've already fallen off the #blogtember wagon. What can I say, it's been a long week (already) and I haven't been feeling the inspiration. That said- I'm going rogue and instead of following today's topic, I'm going to skip back a couple of days to the first topic I missed. Maybe I'll play catch-up this weekend. Maybe I won't.  Without further adieu:

Tuesday, September 10: Describe a distinct moment when your life took a turn.

When I first saw this prompt, I had a hard time deciding on a specific topic. My life has been full of twists and turns, all of them pretty distinct and meaningful. There was deciding where to go to college. What to study. Taking one internship over the other. Getting pets (shoutout to Stedman). Starting jobs. Leaving jobs. Forging new relationships. And so on and so forth. Every little action causes a great affect on our lives. Let's take a little stroll down memory lane, shall we?

Graduating college. It was 2009, a few months after the economic collapse. Our charming graduation speaker actually said something along the lines of "I don't envy you- none of you are getting jobs". I have always been a bit of an overachiever, and had already spent my last semester of college working full time for her majesty Oprah. I knew that my freelance gig would last as long as I wanted, and $10 an hour sounded pretty solid to my 21 year old, completely clueless self. There was no way I was moving back to Idaho. I had been living in a three bedroom apartment, but one of my roommates was moving home to Montana after graduation. My other roomie, N, had a couple more years of school, so in between graduation festivities, finals, etc. we began the search for a two bedroom apartment on a ramen budget. Everyone talks about being a poor college student- oh no, friends. There is nothing quite like being a poor, underemployed, underpaid, uninsured recent college graduate.

 As you can probably guess, Chicago is not the cheapest city in which to live.  We had high hopes of finding something livable under $1,200, no easy task (and thanks to inflation, it would now be impossible). One apartment we looked at had graffiti on the side, a mysterious shed we weren't allowed in, and was underneath the train. It was also across the street from the stable where the horses for carriage rides lived, so as you can imagine, it smelled wonderful. Another "two bedroom" was in fact a one bedroom with a weird alcove and a water heater taking up most of the bathroom. Because N and I worked completely different schedules, we could never view places together. And, because any slightly non repulsive, affordable apartment in Chicago is in high demand, you basically have to sign a lease the second you walk in the door. There is no "thinking about it" over cocktails a la House Hunters. Finally, N stumbled across a complete craphole right on the edge of Lincoln Park and Lakeview East. The floors were warped and stained, the radiator heat shook the walls, there was no air conditioning, and the laundry was in a creepy, spider, rat (and probably corpse) filled basement. But it had a dishwasher (!!!) and a deck. Sight unseen, I signed the lease. 

A month later, we moved into our first "big girl" apartment. The responsibility was finally all mine- my parents didn't co-sign, the bills were in my name, and I finally had a real, insurance providing job. "This must be adulthood" I thought to myself upon moving in. As a housewarming present, my dad bought us a couch- a charming purple sofa bed that stayed with me right up until I moved to Atlanta this spring (RIP couch). I lived in that apartment for two and a half years. The building was broken into multiple times. The laundry stained all of my clothes. I made friends with the rats on the stairwell. I named the cat on the first floor Colonel Meow. Our shower started growing moss, and at one point- a mushroom. Salad, anyone? Instead of cleaning it, the leasing company came in and painted over the plants, so we had a chunk of painted moss in the shower forever. We had to sign an agreement that we wouldn't chew on the walls since there was lead paint. My bedroom overlooked Clark Street, so I heard the sounds of drunk frat boys and a man hawking waffles across the street at all hours of the night. And, for the first four nights of living there, I didn't sleep a wink because there was a streetlight directly outside of my window. I finally rectified this situation with blackout curtains that velcroed together, so every morning, I woke up and opened the shades with a loud RIIIIIIIIIP to start my day. In short, it was a giant health code violation, and I loved it.

So how could living in a glorified hostel be such a turning point in my life? You ask. Because after a year of living there, some new neighbors moved in. One of them was tall and jewish looking, and I immediately began referring to him as "future boyfriend". He was the Seth Cohen that I'd been dreaming about since I was 16, and he was my neighbor. It was absolute perfection. After a few nights of neighborly bonding, he invited me over to watch Jersey Shore (a show I absolutely despised but pretended to be into so I could hang out with him, duh). And after a season of Jersey Shore dates, Future BF turned into Actual BF, who turned into J- the love of my life. 

N and I could have lived in any of the 10+ crappy apartments we looked at after college. But we didn't. We chose a repulsive building where the heat cut out several times over the winter, and risked asbestos and mold poisoning to live in a cheap, large apartment in the middle of Frat Town. And now, four years later, here I am on my awesome Flexsteel couch in Atlanta, with J working away upstairs. Had we lived anywhere else, who knows where I'd be. Who knows who my neighbor would have been. At no point in my life did I ever think I'd be living in the south, and here I am. The course of my entire life changed when I moved into that craphole. And because of that, I will always consider 2900 N. Clark Street as Holy Ground. 

What about you? What moment has been a turning point in your life?