“This is it,” you say, almost in a sigh, exhaling a sense of relief that this day has finally arrived. “Honestly, I can’t believe we finished so quickly,” you continue, tying the last trash bag closed. Soon you will fully discard the shell of your former life, a molting process years in the making.
We moved in together right before the pandemic and, for a while, there was a certain symbiosis. But we had both, in our own ways, forced the inevitability of our separation. I had said some harsh things and you had responded in kind, and now I was gone, and you were left to clean up the mess.
“I’m sorry, I’ll miss you!” you shout to the apartment, your voice echoing throughout the vacant rooms. “We’ll miss this place, right?” You turn, expecting me to say, Of course we will. We loved it here. (I, in fact, would’ve said, “Living with you killed me, so I won’t exactly miss this place.”)
But I am not there, and upon that realization, you are a little concerned about how audibly you’ve been speaking to yourself. A casual observer might think you were crazy. So you vacuum in silence, removing every last trace of dust and hair from each empty room. Cleaning is the one stipulation that allowed you to break your lease early.
Leave your key in the mailbox, your landlord had texted earlier that morning as both an instruction and her way of saying goodbye. (“We won’t miss her,” you say under your breath.)
You almost feel guilty about how quickly you decided to vacate our apartment.
“How quickly we decided to leave,” you correct.
A large, taped box sits in a corner by the front door, ready to be loaded in your car. A brief panic washes over you—that you’ve forgotten some trinket or tchotchke of questionable worth, but immense emotional value, a missed stain of DNA to indicate that you had once lived here. That we had both lived here.
To be fair, you loved this apartment (more than I ever did), imbuing it with meaning beyond what its affordable rent and location in an up-and-coming neighborhood deserved. Each chipped corner or scuffed wall memorialized a specific moment in time—like when you moved our new coffee table into the living room by yourself (because I told you to wait but you wanted to do it anyway) and scratched the wood floor in the process; or the time you were so delirious with laughter that you knocked over our vacuum cleaner into an adjacent bookcase, causing both of them to tip over and crash into the western-facing wall, leaving a hole right where its heart should be; or the time you hurriedly cleaned up a giant mess you had made in the kitchen, while a forgotten stew burned on the stove. (I tried to erase many of these memories by scrubbing the floors or filling holes in the wall with spackle. But, alas, I couldn’t fix them all and so they’ll likely come out of our security deposit.)
As you survey the empty apartment one final time, the air feels stifling in its loneliness. Any evidence of previous occupants has been methodically removed. You turn and say, “I don’t think it’s ever been this spotless.” But I’ve been gone for over a week now, unable to help you clean your mess. Instead, my memory lingers like a faint ghost haunting our now-former home (a place you naively thought we’d never leave).
Right then, as if conjured by the sheer power of your reminiscence, I appear like a specter and walk into the living room with purpose, the distinct scent of my hair conditioner and hand cream wafting in my wake, a smell familiar that it’s almost pungent, as if it’s seeping out of the walls. Without even acknowledging your presence, I scan the room, pausing at the kitchen—one last inspection before the termination of our contractual agreement to live together.
I turn to depart, and you start to speak. But as your eyes lock with mine, your expression reads like a string of regrets and apologies beyond what spoken words can express. A glimmer of recognition flashes across my face, as if I’m about to offer my own apologies and regrets. You remember our last fight (the one where I told you I was leaving) and the words I used—“Your obsession with me is unhealthy” and “Separation will only help you grow” and “If you saw this as a friendship, you’d understand.” The memory hits you like a slap in the face, as if my harsh mix of consonants and vowels echoes freshly even now. But instead, I walk past you and exit the apartment in silence. You know, from this point on, you’ll never see me again.
The two of us didn’t part on the best of terms, a byproduct of being pandemic roommates. Near the end, we communicated exclusively through terse and oddly formal emails (sent while sitting less than a dozen feet apart). During the lockdown, the closeness developed between us became more than either of us could sustain until, like two positive charges repelling each other, neither of us could stand to be in the same room at the same time.
But you always loved our apartment, which was encircled by three grocery stores, five parks, and a freeway onramp. It had the best afternoon sunlight in its reading corner, illuminated in a bright amber color that just ignited your imagination. The steady hum of your refrigerator had a calming effect as we both navigated a complex work-from-home dance of dueling virtual meetings and a shuffle of mute buttons. The smell of damp grass in our miniature front yard reminded you that the outdoors existed, even when you were trapped inside. In our living room, we would often curl up on the couch to sleep, knees and calves intertwined as we shared a blanket while facing opposite ends.
Our apartment almost magically cleaned itself, preserving its pristine surfaces with a faint hint of evergreen trees. (Once I was gone, you quickly discovered that it was not magical and that I would often clean with an off-brand Pine-Sol, and you had just never noticed.) It was also cheap in a time when rents across the city rose, allowing us to splurge on random finds from Amazon (who, after all, needs an olive oil spray bottle or a watermelon cubing tool?) or on weekly cheese-and-honey boards (viral social media trends that had, unfortunately, stuck).
You would’ve spent decades in this apartment because you were, for a long time, comfortable. And you wanted to spend those decades living with me. But like potted plants bought on impulse, once we hit our zenith, both of us had nowhere left to grow. During the lockdown, we often vented about our grievances, starting with our jobs (which didn’t pay us what we were worth) and ending with the overall listlessness of our lives as they failed to follow their intended trajectories. For a while, it felt cathartic even as we both lost our way.
But it was during one particular too-honest assessment of each other’s complaints that the cracks in our friendship began.
It started when I said, “I think you really need to see someone. Like a professional.”
And even though it wasn’t the first time I had suggested therapy, in that moment you felt betrayed. We were both stubbornly resistant to change but unhappy with the status quo. You thought it was unfair of me to weaponize your gripes and say that you, alone, needed therapy.
“You need professional help just as much as me,” you responded.
“Maybe. But you definitely need it more.”
“Why?” You started to sound increasingly defensive. “You’re in a shitty situation too. And you hate your job and your life just as much as I do.”
“Yeah, but it’s too late for me,” I said, almost paternalistic in my recommendation that you need help more than me. “You, on the other hand, could really benefit from talking so someone other than me.”
When you got angry, you flared your nostrils and inhaled forcefully for three seconds, composing yourself before you overreacted.
After a brief silence, you said, “Okay, sure,” and ended the conversation.
Every day after that, we would have the same fight. And like a scab you couldn’t help but peel, our unhappiness became a constant point of conversation and disagreement. Both of us kept clawing layers back until each of our lives were raw and unsightly to the other. In the end, you felt like I hated you (and, quite possibly, you hated me even more). So we stopped speaking.
But that isn’t the memory you choose to honor at this moment, as you turn off the lights, exit the apartment, and lock the door. Instead, your departure reminds you of our countless nights before the pandemic, the nights when we’d get ready to go out with a few shots of cheap tequila, your “90s Party Playlist” providing the soundtrack of our pregame montage. We were the same size and often exchanged clothes, swapping complete outfits if the others’ look fit a particular vibe. The city’s nightlife was vibrant but far from our apartment, and, both being cheapskates (plus, parking took forever and was expensive), we often elected to bike across the city to reach our destinations, eschewing helmets and other protective gear in favor of shouts at the moon and hands pushing hair back in the wind. (We each got into exactly one accident during our time together, neither life threatening, but we both resolved to be safer in the future—unsuccessfully.)
Both of us loved to sing, with motions that could be called dancing (but, more accurately, were a mixture of flailing arms and dramatic snaps, of head banging and hair flipping, of chests bent forward with concurrent skips backwards). Off-key and sans rhythm, we would belt out Celine Dion’s greatest hits in the safe space of our apartment, interspersing lyrics with laughter. Our neighbors rarely complained, and you imagined that they quite enjoyed the performance, as if we were a local radio show projected through our open windows for passersby to enjoy.
After taking the remaining garbage bags to the trash bin in the side alley, you use both hands to carry the large, taped box to your car. You consider subconsciously throwing it away as well, but you think better of it. But in that moment when the thought crosses your mind, a feeling of emptiness grips you, a pull from beyond the now-locked door, as if the apartment itself also grieves over our departure. As if it knows that you ended a life there.
You are reminded of the day I decided to leave. You were in the middle of cutting carrots for a stew. A rerun of Gilmore Girls played in the background from your phone, propped up against an empty pot, and you didn’t realize I was standing behind you until I spoke.
“I’m moving out.”
I said it so bluntly that you were stunned, with Sam Phillips’ vocalized emotions as the only sounds piercing the silence that followed. You rested your right wrist on your hip, hand still gripping the knife. Rather than respond, you mentally started to reduce your expenses (the Amazon splurges and the cheese-and-honey boards), planning out how you could possibly afford this apartment on your own, all while I stared at you, waiting for some reaction. Maybe you could do it, pay the rent yourself with some hardship, if only to preserve the afternoon sunlight and the proximity to Trader Joe’s and the easy access to the freeway.
But what about living with me? You couldn’t reduce your expenses enough to recreate the lazy afternoons of us curled up on the couch, laughing at daytime talk shows on network TV. Nor could you save enough money to preserve the memory of me holding up a flashlight as we tried to decipher the breaker box after your air fryer short circuited the power, or the mess of my shoes surrounding (but not on) the shoe rack next to your front door (because you used to yell at me to take off my shoes before entering the house until it finally became a habit).
And the task of packing seemed so daunting that you briefly considered begging me to change my mind. But you were silent for too long and I took that as an acceptance of my decision.
“I’ll leave as soon as I find a place, but I wanted you to know now.” I held your gaze as I said it, and you read only seriousness from my expression.
Finally, you asked, “Why?”
“Your obsession with me is unhealthy,” I responded, turning away so as not to look directly in your eyes, as if I knew my words were betraying some unspoken trust we shared.
“I don’t think that’s fair,” you countered, but I wasn’t in the mood to argue.
“Separation will only help you grow,” I added. “If you saw this as a friendship, you’d understand.”
Your breath quickened. Your pulse accelerated, beating furiously as if a sprinter was charging forth from your chest. Your ears began to ring and all other noises—the sizzling stove, Sam Phillips, my last words (“You’ll be fine”)—dulled as you broke out into a warmthless sweat. Your vision blurred and all you could see was the change, the dramatic upheaval of an inevitable move, the separation from me, the loss of our cocreated memories. It was more than you could manage and you felt your body lunge forward on its own.
I was staring at the stove, giving you time to process. From my peripheral vision, I noticed the movement a split second before I felt the pain.
In a flash, you had extended your right hand as if offering me a handshake. But you still held the knife. Your eyes traced a line starting from your wrist to your fingers, then to the blade penetrating my body. You had stabbed me in the chest, center-left, pointing upward, as if aiming for my heart. I looked down at the knife, shocked, but with some other expression mixed on my face. As I crumpled to the ground, you could see that I was almost smirking because I knew that you now understood how right I had been all along.
Blood spilled from my wound and started to make a mess on the kitchen floor. But before it could pool, you wrapped me in trash bags, taping them together to seal in my corpse. I looked like a mummy wrapped in black plastic, one whose bandages concealed both his body and the memory of this moment. You put me in a large box and taped me shut, and then you cleaned the kitchen with bleach. Twice. In the following days, you told everyone that I had moved out already.
As you load the large, taped box into your car, placing it inconspicuously next to the other moving boxes, you begin to accept the end of this chapter in your life. After all, roots need new soil and bigger pots to grow, even if that requires abandoning the steadfast comfort of perfect sunlight and the surrounding parks. You can’t recall experiencing any stage of grief. Instead, you had immediately accepted your situation and threw yourself into finding a home in a different city, ready for the memories you could make in a place where the sun might not be as perfect for reading, but in which you’d still be able to read well enough. You were ready for the nascent potential budding in the emptiness of a new apartment.
Within a week, you had signed a new lease in Santa Fe, contacted our landlord about breaking your current lease, and began to pack and clean. Your thought processes and motions were mechanical, as if you were still in a daze. Robotically, you went through your list of next steps: quit your job, buy industrial cleaning supplies, remove any sign that either of us had lived in the apartment, and throw away my things (piecemeal in random dumpsters around the city).
With the last of your possessions crammed into your car, you place your key in the mailbox and give our now-former apartment one last look from the outside. The exterior paint is fading and chipped, and the gutters need cleaning. The branch of a nearby tree threatens to break through one of the windows. From the street, it looks like any other row house in a sea of nearly identical row houses. But our apartment’s uniqueness, its imbued meaning, lives on through your memories of it—the physical instantiations of which are tightly packed in boxes labeled “unsorted clothes” and “books for Zoom display” and “kitchen things” and “roommate.” You plan to hold onto these items forever, or at least until you reach your new home.
Now an empty shell, the apartment looks somber as it bids you farewell, using the shadow of the nearby tree’s branch to wave goodbye. You wave back and a passerby looks at you strangely. (But she can’t possibly comprehend the bond you had with this place, especially if she has never heard the singing.)
As you drive away, turning onto the freeway onramp, you breathe slowly and tell yourself, “This is it.”