17. Lucky just to keep afloat.

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There is thing I do, when I step through my door at the end of a long day, where I take a moment where I am very still and quiet. I stand in the middle of my kitchen (for that's where the 'front' door enters into, in my apartment), bag strapped over shoulder, keys dangling from my fingers, and I breathe in the air.

Sometimes I smell the stick of incense I've burned in the morning before I left to catch the bus, other times it's toast, or coffee, or even last night's dinner (it's really difficult to ever have too much garlic). Whatever it is, it's home. Recently I took a string of blue and white string lights and I put them up in this weird little ceiling alcove area between the kitchen and the living room. It's actually a 4-way intersection, as it also meets the head-on doorways to the pantry and the clothes closet. There's no wiring there, and no real place to put a standing lamp, and so that bit's been dark and dreary for some time now.

It changes the apartment, that awkwardly-placed string of lights. So does the goofy tie-dyed sheet I've put over the door-less entrance to the closet, but that'll be remedied as soon as I can get my brother to actually install the tracked door my mom and I bought months and months ago.

Months and months ago, 12, to be exact, I moved into this place. I was scared and so sure of myself, all at the same time. I was financially in a very bad place, but had the kindness of family and the fortuitousness of determination and confidence surprise me with a bit of stability. I moved in after giving the place a good mopdown or thirty, and I've been re-building my life ever since.

I kinda broke someone's heart, I kinda saved my own life, I kinda felt like it was sink or swim time. I had to make a decision to be on my own, because me + someone else was an equation that almost always answered in the negative. It wasn't his fault, and really, it wasn't mine, either. When I wanted to try harder at being happy, I tried as hard as I could. When I felt down, it unraveled more quickly than I could ever knit it all together again. So here I am, a year later, and I still have bad days, except they're more like bad hours. Perhaps little tiny fits of bad minutes. For fun, my brain will toss me 5 seconds of bad. Fickle mind I've got.

I move through these rooms cautiously sometimes, as if it's all going to up and disappear overnight. I still have that worry, even today. All these decisions I've made in my head don't make me seem any different. My hair is not shinier, my skin is not clearer, my teeth and gums won't get me any commercial spots because I am a lot less sad than I used to be.

I dunno. I'm moving forward, I suppose. Moving on. Each moment making a home, finishing a room, getting rid of old papers and giving away books to strangers lightens the load on my shoulders.

It's been one year of growing up that I didn't do for the past 6 or 7. I'm still young.

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