THINGS I MISS

I Miss Home as a Refuge

The best part of my apartment was always coming back from outside

Illustrations courtesy of the author.

I bought my canary-yellow bar cart a little over a year ago, during a time when my days looked fairly similar to how they do now: I was home for weeks on end, rarely venturing outside.

I’d devoted a month to the project of freezing my eggs, a decision I made after my last breakup, and the recovery from the egg-harvesting procedure involved a lot of sitting on my couch. I was in pain and felt dizzy, so it didn’t feel safe to stray very far.

I’m not a homebody; it’s unusual for me to spend that much time indoors. I like people. I like making plans. I moved to New York to be in New York. And yet in that time, the solitude felt welcome. I cooked, I ordered in, I read, I watched movies. I always had an excuse at the ready to decline plans. I felt so cozy, so deliciously lazy, so happy to pamper myself with sweets and rest. I made my apartment exactly the way I wanted, hanging up new at. I invested in the bar cart to have something cheerful to look at.

Afterwards, I wished for another time like that, but even longer. (I now retract my wish.) Who knew, when I decorated this place last year, that I was decorating for this moment in time — when this apartment would become my…