I find it astounding that my childhood was spent almost entirely in one suburban residence. For over 15 years I called Cedar Oak Cove my home, the local Piggly Wiggly my home away from home.
Since the age of 18, however, I’ve had to memorize 10 different addresses and phone numbers, almost as if the military has been strategically stationing me in semi-permanent housing.
But I’m not in the military.
Does this mean I’m transient? Or that my attention span only allows for an average of .8 years per address? Why can’t I just pick a place and settle my ass down?
Is this a side-effect of earning a higher education, of sacrificing permanence for the cheapest place I could find on the $6/hr salary I earned baking bread? I got so used to sharing living spaces with multiple stangers that life in college resembled a pack of winding pit stops at various women’s hostels where the average Friday night was spent sipping Sprite and seeing just how far we could bend the rules of Pictionary. Oh, the insanity.
I’ve been living at my current address for a record amount of time: 1.65 years. Longer than I have lived in any other residence since I flew the nest of childhood with credit card wings. What makes this place special, I suppose, is that I’ve made it wholly my own. I found it, paid for it, littered it with Southern Living catalogs all by my little self.
That is, until this weekend. I’m officially getting a roommate.
I wonder if we’ll stay put.
