No Place Like Home

These days, regardless of what goes on in my day, few things can get me down. For two weeks now, I have been on Cloud Numero Nueve, and there is no sign that I am coming down for a while.

After this wild and crazy year -- calling off a wedding, disengaging from the life I had with my fiance, heading to Europe for the spring, shifting living spaces all summer, giving all my possessions away along the way because 'who needs all this crap', running my ass off because I signed up for the marathon, convincing my boss that not only did I need time off but I needed to be kept around when I returned, I could go on and on, but this year has been nuts! BUT, after all that, I have kept a promise I made to myself at the very beginning of this journey: Miss Paige, you can do WHATEVER the hell you want this year, but by January 1 you better be living somewhere with your name on it and all your belongings inside that space. It can be a tent in Timbuktu, an igloo in Alaska, but WHEREVER it is, you better plan to stay there for at least 24 months. I am so proud to report I am almost there!

The day I returned from Europe in September, I found a terrific little apartment that I knew was meant to be mine. And now its my home. Every day I feel like a kid in a candy shop when I head home, because coming home to myself is such an amazing feeling. Kind of like in elementary school when you went to your best friend's house after school because it was the coolest place you knew... that's how I feel EVERYDAY about my own home. Silly? Maybe.

After 7 years in this gigantic Apple, all I have ever wanted is to deal with myself, and a space to do just that, and yet that one thing kept eluding me from crazy roommates who were convinced they were dying -- or worse, their boyfriends -- or double worse, their dogs, live in boyfriends that really shouldn't be there, fly by night roommates, that were never there except when you didn't want them to be... And even since leaving the apartment I shared with my ex, I have lived alone, but in other people's homes, so my stuff was there but the furnishings were nothing that I would have chosen. And then there were rules to follow -- like the lady that needed to come to the apartment for an hour every Wednesday and had all these pencil drawings of boobs on the wall (the Boob Apartment), or the crazy chick from this summer that wanted to charge me for plastic hangers that I didn't take -- its funny business living in anyone's house. Regardless of what or who, my living experiences in NYC up until now have never really worked out the way I hoped.

But since Day 1 - October 1 - when I moved my 3 suitcases and 4 duffle bags into my new home, I knew I would finally find the feeling I have been searching for since I got to Manhattan. And as my couch arrived this morning, and I sat down and watched the world go by outside my window, I know its time to put my feet up for a bit and relax. I am home. And that feeling -- the one I allowed to elude me for the past 7 years -- is simply the best feeling one could ever have. And I am so thankful that today, and hopefully for days to come, that feeling is mine.