The Running Free

Friday 11:30 pm-Interstate 80

You're going Home 

You're Running Free

As if you would be 

if  you never owed them anything

And now you're on your way out

In the trust you've seen 

your path on home.

I didn't feel like I was going home. I was driving to the new place but it didn't feel like home. It still doesn't. I feel like I'm in a holding pattern. I know this place is just temporary and it's unsettling. I feel unrelaxed. However, when this song came on, the words that stuck in my mind were running free. I don't feel like I have a home but I feel free. I have officially fled the coop.

Andy, Adam, and I recently got moved in to our new place. It's a small two bedroom apartment in upper North Berkeley. It's a beautiful and relatively quiet area. We live right near the Cal Berkeley campus so we have many grad students for neighbors. This is the view from my bed. I picked up a loft bed from IKEA and set it up in the living room because I don't have my own room. I only have about a foot and a half of clearance between myself and the rough painted stucco ceiling but at least we have a decent living area that we don't have to be embarrassed about when we have company. $300 to not look stupid in front of people. Was it worth it? You be the judge. 

It took about three days for me to finally get settled. two of those days were spent putting my rather large 

bed together by myself. Underneath my bed I have a large comfy egg chair and a shelf with my DVDs and CDs. I put up some framed pictures along the wall underneath just so I could claim that small space for myself and leave the rest of the living space up for communal decoration. 

The nights are quiet. When Andy's not at his girlfriend Estrella's house, he's usually in bed by 10pm and Adam shortly after. The neighbors are all pretty much quiet with the exception of one. He woke me up this morning with the sound of really loud crooning echoing through the bathroom vents. This went on for about 30 minutes before he started to add a little percussion to his dreadful singing. This included banging on the sink and what maybe sounded like a towel rack. All I wanted to do was sleep in a bit but for the next hour all I heard was my loud, obnoxious upstairs neighbor.

At this point I feel neutral about the whole living situation. I'm not incredibly happy about it but I'm not incredibly upset either. I'm unhappy in the sense that I have to scrape whatever remnants of a paycheck I have to throw towards rent, utilities, and parking (yes I have to pay for parking and yes I agree that it's totally stupid) on top of having to pay my other bills. I'm also unhappy that I had to leave my old home under the circumstances that I did; I don't want to not live at home but I can't live there if I want to maintain any sort of healthy mental state. Ironically enough, my brother and I finally started to get along after years of us hating each other. Overall I think the amount of money I'm spending and the amount of stress I'm incurring are all a small price to pay for my independence.