Countdown

Perhaps a few days after this new year began, I put a countdown on my desktop. I set the end date for June 25th, which is my wedding anniversary, and in a moment of hopeful naivety I titled it "Home & Anniversary," thinking that in approximately sixth months I would not only be married for a whole two years but I would also be back home in Washington. 

It's too early to say that I was completely wrong. But not too early to wish that I had set my sights on something else.

I have no doubts about my anniversary. It will arrive, and it will be lovely, and then it will pass. What I fear will never come is the long drive home, and every day that I wake up and I'm still in Illinois brings another reminder of how desperately I long to leave it.

Our neighbors to the left, on two separate evenings (and by "evening" I really mean 2am), sounded so violent and frenzied that we called the police. Our neighbors responded by hiding in their bathroom, leaving the two policemen banging on the front door for the next hour. 

The people in our building also draw phallic symbols on the walls, place burning incense sticks in the hallway vents, let loose smoke bombs in the entryway, shatter the entryway door, not to mention all the swearing and malevolence directed at children. The walls are not quite paper thin, but they're thin enough, and no one here knows how to be quiet. Everything is a crisis, everything is worth screaming about, especially if your five-year-old did it. 

And when I am not overwhelmed by the social anxiety of living here, the building itself provides me with crap that makes me want to pull my hair out. We had ants in the bedroom and the bathroom (both nowhere near the kitchen) from July until November. There are leaks and large amounts of mold on both windows, and while we have called in work orders THREE times, nothing has been done. And yesterday, whilst eagerly cleaning the entire apartment, I discovered that there is somehow water in the bedroom closet. I don't know how it happened. Logically, there is no way that water could get in there.

I just feel trapped. At every turn I find another reason to hate living here--and I already know these are the cheapest apartments that allow dogs of Holly's size. But it's not just the building. It's not the "neighbors." It's the increasing level of anxiety I feel as my countdown numbers lower. 106 Days. Somehow, in the next 106 Days, I am supposed to get enough money to rent a moving van, pay for the gas for the van and the car to drive back to Washington, and before then I have to find and reserve a place to live there and get a job. Oh, and I have to graduate sometime before then. Like in May? Yeah, that sounds good.

I know. I put that expectation upon myself when I blissfully made the countdown. And I don't have to hold myself to those numbers. But I feel like I owe it to myself to get out of here. Every time I hear the woman next door shrieking about who moved her cereal bowl, I die a little. Every time someone groans about rain, a piece of my soul chips away. Every time I see a "forest preserve" I feel like joining a commune. (In Washington, we have parks, and then we just have woods. The woods don't need a name. They just exist all by themselves.) 

And every time someone slows down to drive over some bumpy railroad tracks, I want to rear-end that person so hard that they land on Mt. Rainier and have to find their own way back down.