The ‘good’ in ‘goodbye’
Turned in my keys to the old place today. I’m sad, in a way. I had a lot of dreams that I planned to achieve while I was there. Seeing the place empty and sparkling, just like it was last year, was bittersweet, because I know the adventures that lie ahead don’t even compare to the ones I conquered thus far.
If there’s one thing that’s true of me, it’s that I don’t get hung up in sentimentality. Maybe it’s the Gemini in me, who can turn emotions on and off as needed, because I was going to take photos, just to remember. But I didn’t. I don’t have a single photo of that apartment, and I don’t need one. Just another thing to get shoved into the iPhoto archive, and I already have 40 billion pix in there preserving memories that might not have been altogether that happy anyway.
If I think about it, I don’t have a lot of photos of people. Tons of scenery — lakes and mountains and sunsets and the like. But the people who meant the most to me, I never did get around to committing to Kodak paper. I remember their eyes, the pace at which they breathed, what made them smile, the way I felt when they smiled at me. The only three-dimensional photographs are the ones the heart takes.
In any event, the old place raped me for a $300 final gas bill. The hell? I’ve had the heat off since February. (Yep, I’m cold-blooded, funny you should ask.) Heh. Just wait till they see how much I underpaid my April rent. 😉 But I did tell the girl who signed me out how much I loved living there. She asked why I didn’t stay in the building, and I spared her the three million blog entries in which I’ve bitched to high hell about their incompetence. It’s irrelevant now. I simply said it was my unit that held the magic — that the stars couldn’t align to produce something else I loved just as much. Well, not there, anyway.
The metaphor carries over to life. Beauty is available everywhere, but it’s usually the last place where you’d expect to look that you’d find an overabundance of it. Perhaps all the frustrations and getting lost along the way and general malaise that threatens to hold you back is your test to see if you’re deserving of what previously eluded you. I don’t know. We’ll see, friends. We’ll see. …