One last look

This whole month, my ex and I paid rent at both our old and new apartments so we could have enough time to move things over and get the old place cleaned up. It's been an odd month of transition. You can't make a clean break with someone when there's mutually owned furniture to sell on craigslist, piles of random items to go through and divide up, and cleaning to do (or in our case, a cleaning service to hire — now that was money well spent).

Throughout the month, we've been talking on the phone frequently about all the apartment details, and we've seen each other at least once a week. We're still on amicable terms, so it hasn't been awkward, really, but it has been sad. When we run errands for the old place, he still opens the car door for me, still carries things for me, still jokes around and calls me by his pet name for me, even. If I'm not careful, it's easy to let myself forget for a moment that we ever broke up. But then, in an instant, the realization hits me and every act of kindness suddenly makes me incredibly sad all over again. It was even worse when we were still living in the apartment during the two weeks after the breakup. It's separate togetherness. It's relationship limbo.

I was relieved when we went to the old apartment last night to grab the remainder of our stuff and wrap things up there for good. The place was clean and empty, and as we were about to leave, I sat down on the living room floor and took one last look around. The empty space reminded me of how the place looked when we first moved in three years ago, and I thought back to how excited we were then and how happy we had been living there over the years. I thought about how I'd never again come down those stairs and see him sitting on the couch, how I'd never cook us dinner in that kitchen again, how I'd never spend time in those rooms again. When I walked out the door and closed it behind me for the last time, it didn't feel like I was just saying goodbye to the old apartment; it felt like I was saying goodbye to my old life.

I thought I was past the spontaneous-crying phase of this post-breakup period, but after I got in my car, I cried all the way home.

An end and a beginning

I always thought that by the time I was 30, I'd have a great career and would be slowly climbing the ranks in whatever profession I happened to be in. I thought I'd be happily married and starting a family. I thought I'd have it all figured out.

It hasn't exactly been that simple. I've been at the same job, in the same position, for four years. My job, which has no clear path for advancement at my company, is not even something I'd really care to do for the rest of my life. As for my love life, I spent nearly the entire span of my twenties in two relationships. First, a four-and-a-half-year run with my first love, a person who ultimately could not make me a priority in his life. Second, a six-year relationship with someone I thought was the one. We lived together and often spoke of getting married one day, but six years in, when I started pressing him on when that "one day" would be, he revealed he still wasn't ready to get married and didn't know if or when he ever would be. (Definitely didn't see that one coming.) It just seemed too risky to wait it out another x-amount of years on his assertion that he was "pretty sure" he wanted to get married at some point down the line, so unfortunately, amid much tears and heartache, that was that.

Now, my thirtieth birthday is just a few months away, and I'm single (with a serious lack of dating experience), living alone for the first time in my life, and reevaluating my career in one of the worst job markets in recent history.

Yup, this wasn't exactly what I had envisioned. But who knows. Maybe with a little luck, everything will turn out even better than I planned. (That's what I have to keep telling myself, at least.)

Let the adventure begin.