21 Apartments
Your internal voice
We are moving again.
And so the apartment search started. We dedicated three full days to it: there were many steps, tears, rain, and lots of takeout food. I think I wore the wrong shoes. Water seeped in. We visited 21 apartments. Yes, twenty-one.
It is an interesting thing, stepping into people’s lives to search for one’s own. I found this process deeply personal, not only because we are starting over in a new place (more on that later), but because we interacted with the current tenants in these apartments. They told us about their landlords and their lives there.
Some tenants were too busy working to even look up from their computers to say hello to us (crazy how this has become the norm). Others were very welcoming and warm, such as the couple who told us they were expecting a child soon and needed more space, though they loved their bay window looking onto the red-brick building in front. Others just made us feel awkward, pointing at the twelve half-empty bottles on the floor as “decor.” I don’t blame them, we were stepping into their lives, and they were probably processing some type of “move” themselves.
I could only feel at home in one of these apartments. Funnily enough, it was the one that had no one living in it when we visited. Even though I was tempted by another inhabited by a sweet American guy who had memorized the year of the moldings on the wall, I gravitated toward the new energy. Clean slate over 19th-century moldings this time around.
I have realized, over time and across eight moves, that when you move outside things, things inside you move as well. I came up with this phrase. Thanks, I know, it is fantastic and deep.
It is also real. Memories come back and expectations become heavier. If you are moving, you must believe in your vision. If not, why even bother? This can feel heavy, but also inspiring.
I had an interview for an academic program after the apartment search. It was the first time in a while that I could reach deep into my heart and touch that little pocket of emotion that tells you you are on the right track. Individuality is hard to reach.
On my way back from the interview, I picked up a book called New Finnish Grammar, written by Diego Marani. It was highly recommended by the bookstore staff. Despite its flat title, I decided to give it a go. It is a beautiful story about identity: a man is found during WWII wearing a Finnish uniform, but he cannot remember anything. Not even his language. He begins learning Finnish and, through language, starts recovering his identity. Or what he believes his identity to be.
He begins to realize the difference between his true self, suddenly stripped of outside influences by memory loss, and what a Finnish soldier of that time was supposed to represent. This felt very fitting with my own musings.
At some point, his doctor says something that stayed with me:
”One more bit of advice,” he said. “I speak now as a man, not as a doctor. Since language is our mother try and find yourself a woman. It is from a woman that we come into this world, from a mother that we learn to speak. Fall in love, give of yourself. Switch off your brain and follow your heart. You must fall in love with a voice, and with every word you hear it utter.”
“Switch your brain off and follow your heart.” I think that is what one must do when starting anew. “You must fall in love with a voice, and with every word you hear it utter.” And well, this, I think more than an outside voice, you must fall in love with your own internal one. That one will lead you to the right apartment, the right home.
