Day 6: Never Have I Ever...Lived On My Own

I'm a big fan of the bucket list. While I don't have a formal list created, I find myself adding to a mental tally when I see or hear about something I'd like to do, and then keeping my eye out for opportunities to do it.

Monday's theme of Never Have I Ever resembles the popular game in that each week I'll either blog about something that I had never done before - up until that week, that is - or will tell the story of something that I once did that I had never done before.

And since I'll be taking a huge leap away from my comfort zone each week - whether it be in recalling something new I did in the past or telling the tale of something new as it's happening - I'm hoping to surprise even myself.

So Never Have I Ever... lived on my own until I was 21 years old. And I think it was because I lived on my own that my 21st year on this earth was one of the top two best times in my life (the other, if you're wondering, was October, 1999 to January, 2000 when I was single during my senior year of high school).

I signed the lease at 2040 East Orchard Lakes Place, Apt. 11, in Toledo, Ohio, in June of 2004 after landing my first "real" job out of high school at The Blade newspaper. Nothing made me feel as adult as waking up in my own place, getting ready for work in my own bathroom, and making myself breakfast in my own kitchen.
But the day I closed the door after my parents on my very first night sleeping completely alone, the thought was like a lightning bolt through my chest - I was scared shitless. So scared, in fact, that not only did I purposely choose a second-floor apartment so no one could climb in the windows, but I also had a wedge alarm that I set under the front door religiously that would make the loudest and most heinous sound I have ever heard if anyone were to open the door unbeknown to me. And if that weren't enough, I slept with a baseball bat and a knife beside and underneath my bed, and went through a self-defense class at the University of Toledo.

After I got over the initial terror, I grew to absolutely love living on my own. My apartment - with the hefty rent payment, at the time anyway, of $625 a month - became my freedom. I could be whoever I wanted in my apartment, wear whatever I wanted, do whatever I wanted, and say whatever I wanted and it was OK. For that reason, I put a sock - a single white sock - smack in the middle of my coffee-table-free living room. Just because I could. Who was going to tell me to pick it up? It became a conversation piece, as I was, and still am, a hyper-organized person.

I loved opening the freezer door and seeing the pizza rolls or ice cream I had bought the week before - no one had eaten it because I was the only one that could. I could read under the light until I fell asleep or rage with a pen on an innocent yellow legal pad at any time and it was OK. I even loved seeing the dirty dishes or laundry pile up because I didn't feel like doing it and who was going to tell me it needed to be done?

My balcony overlooked a pond with a fountain that housed a gaggle of geese and ducks, which I threw bread down to often so they'd stay and I could name them and call them my pets that I didn't have to take care of, save a few pieces of crusty bread when I had it. One of those simple moments in life was me sitting by myself on my balcony in my crazy comfortable lawn chair sipping a drink and drinking in the happiness I felt at that time in my life.

It was a fleeting time of freedom, but one that I still look back fondly on and will cherish as a once-in-a-lifetime period where I could be completely myself. And that was OK.