Every time I move, I say “never again.” For many years, this sentiment kept me in apartments I didn’t particularly like. I was complacent and apathetic, and familiarity can also breed contempt over time as well. This is where I found myself in May. After 3.5 years in my Upper East Side apartment, I woke up one morning thinking there is no way I can do this anymore, there is no way I can live in NYC anymore, and it’s time to take action.
The rational side of me, which often prevails, said, “Hey, the best time to look for an apartment is a week before you move in, and you will surely find a subletter. Just do it.” The emotional side of me was saying, “Oh, but if I move, it absolutely needs to be perfect, and I don’t even know what perfect is. I don’t want to spend more than I do now, and I’ve never paid a broker’s fee in NYC. This is so impractical! What about the furniture? And I travel every week, so when am I even going to get this all done?! What should I do? Why can’t someone just swoop in and take care of everything for me?!” Panic time.
First step: I started perusing StreetEasy and Craigslist to get a sense of the market and general price points in NYC, San Francisco, LA, and Chicago. I knew I needed a change, and I decided that whichever of the 4 cities worked out first would be where I would end up.
Second step: I sent out hundreds of emails and engaged in endless text conversations with patient friends.
Third step: I started dreaming of everything I wanted and had fantasies of BBQs and outdoor space and started narrowing my search further that way.
Ultimately, I had one day in NYC to really look at apartments. All were duds, and I was walking around the LES wondering what my next move should be. I looked up at a building that seemed reasonable. There was a sign advertising apartments for rent, and I called it. “Hello,” a voice answered in a pleasant German accent. “Hi, I am in front of a building with your number on it. I am looking for an apartment, and I would like to look at one now. Would that be possible?” Pause. “Sure, I will transfer you to someone.” Then an odd Eastern European female answers and asks a few questions sounding a bit stoned. “Come to 88 Rivington Street.” Done. We looked at a bunch of apartments, and I saw a few that were quite nice. “Can I sign the lease?” I asked. “Well, you need checks, paystubs, and we need to do a credit check…” I interrupted her. “I have everything, but I only have an hour. We worked quickly, and I ended up with a loft on the Lower East Side, with a move-in date 2 weeks later.
Ouch. Now what to do with my existing apartment on the Upper East Side? I immediately listed it on AirBNB and Craigslist. I ran breathless up the stairs to the third floor to see if my landlady was at home. Her daughter answered and said she would be in Europe for the next month. “Michelle, I am so sorry, but there are some personal things going on here, and I really need to move. I will be moving out in 2 weeks, but I will find someone for you to take over the apartment and pay you an extra $100/month in rent.” She sighed and said, “I understand, but couldn’t you have just painted the bathroom?”
The next day I organized to meet someone who had responded to me on AirBNB, and we agreed to set up a summer lease. I pulled together the documentation, and she signed. The subsequent 2 months made me definitively realize that landlords have one of the worst jobs ever in terms of dealing with difficult people.
I started to pack up the contents of my life, which can be quite emotional. When I had moved into my Upper East Side apartment, I had just gotten out of an 11-year relationship and felt so scared, so broken, and so hopeful. Everything was new, and I was venturing out into the world as a solo independent person for the first time in my adult life. I don’t know if everyone does this, but I associate my homes / apartments with distinct phases of my life, and they are inextricably tied to my sense of identity. With all the changes experienced over the past few years in my work and personal sphere, I realized it was time to cut ties with the past and breathe new energy and space into my intentions for the future…a sort of unsticking process. Home is the anchor for one’s sense of place and identity. It should provide comfort, peace, and stability, and when it stops doing that for some reason, it’s time to go!
I am a packrat…or I should say WAS a packrat. It was painful for me, but one of the most freeing things I did was to just get rid of most of my personal effects. The hardest thing for me to shed were my books. They were memories of a past literary me and my life with my ex. I actually just packed those up and left them in the apartment because I wasn’t ready to let them go. In the end, I think I either left or disposed of 90% of the contents of my old apartment and decided to start anew. It is refreshing to get rid of the weight of the past. This symbolic gesture does help lead to greater clarity of mind and a lightness that I haven’t felt in a long time. I had been dragging so much of the past around with me.
The move to the new place was not easy. Firstly, the apartment wasn’t ready, and they were not able to tear down all the walls, as I had requested. I asked my new tenant if I could keep the boxes in my old apartment for one more day, and she said no. Soooo…I learned that the best thing to do in that situation is to put everything in storage. I called the usual places like Manhattan Mini-Storage, Box Butler, and others, and I received some ridiculously high quotes and given that June is the peak moving season for NYC, no vans to actually pick up the boxes. A friend referred me to squarefoot.com, which was a godsend, and the nicest woman in the world called me back after I had selected a place, and she helped to get a discounted space for me for the month. I only needed a day though. Then it was time to get movers, less than 24 hours before I had to move. I did the standard Google search and Craigslist search, and I realized that the world of moving services is such a fragmented space filled with guys just answering from their cellphones and record-keeping in thick binders filled with hieroglyphics as far as I could tell. I ended up with Andre and his crew of 4 people. He was very very angry, as I think moving is a pretty tough profession. In the end, we ended up making a connection, and I am still extremely grateful to him for all of his help moving me into storage and out of storage into my apartment. We exchanged many phone calls and texts, and I trusted him enough to give him my key to my storage unit to bring me my remaining life effects because I needed to be at work earlier in the day. The main lesson is that moving seems so daunting, but it always gets done, and it can get done ASAP when needed. I hope I’ll remember that next time.
Yesterday, I moved the remaining items out of my apartment on the Upper East Side and into Goodwill around the corner. I was tempted to bring my life’s relics with me back down to my new apartment, but I resisted. It’s time to reflect, hold the good memories in my heart, but fundamentally move forward. Afterwards, I sat at the outdoor cafe of a Tex-Mex restaurant around the corner. I sipped a frozen mango margarita, which I never do and had never done in my 3.5 years in that neighborhood. I reflected on the familiarity and the novelty, said a quiet mental goodbye to that chapter of my life, and wondered what future-me would think about that moment in time.
Discomfort Woman 