Things I Miss, In No Particular Order

My old apartment in LA, especially towards the end. I found an old photo I took of the window right by my bed—the view made my room like the inside of a treehouse, it was so green and light. I think that’s the best bedroom I’ve ever had. The bathroom upstairs was pink, we had a hammock outside by the laundry room. Half of the outlets didn’t work and we had a cupboard that specifically housed a nest of spiders that we never properly dealt with and one roommate used a baseball bat to smash our smoke detector when it kept going off and I’ve never been more sad to leave a place.

January, and most of February, of 2017. I had a good New Year’s Eve, and sometimes wonder if that should’ve been immediately recognized as an omen.

She recently moved to the city herself and we haven’t lived near each other—within walking distance—in two or three years. I was so happy. It felt like falling back into who I was two or three years ago and I appreciate friends who don’t really change. I don’t really change. We didn’t really change—she bought me hot Cheetos early in the morning and let me sleep in her bed and then we watched the beginning of Frozen, which I’ve never watched in its entirety, as she tried to find some Advil. It made me miss the beginning of our friendship, if that makes sense.

The drive from my childhood home to my best friend’s childhood home. She lived in a different town, in a different state. It took me 22 minutes. I also just miss driving.

How shiny and new and exciting and horrible it was right when I first moved to New York.

I’d spend weekends working out of the coffee shop on 33rd and I’d peel off layers of sweaters and scarves and gloves and pile them on top of my coat on the chair across from me. It would always get dark early and I would end up drinking too much coffee and I spent a lot of time reading A Little Life, in an attempt to ignore the fact that a boy was ignoring me.

I used to be funnier, I think.

We started out with a very strong connection but now whenever I see her, I forget how we became friends in the first place. I thought she was going to save me at one point, I was that infatuated.

I admit that I’ve re-read our old conversations.

You know when you read something really good and you wish you could go back to when you didn’t know it existed so that you could experience reading it for the first time again and again and again?

There was a spot on the top floor of the library in the northern part of campus that my dad, when we were first walking around before I even really knew what I was doing, had showed me. Just to point out it existed. I spent four years sitting there and wouldn’t study anywhere else. I do not miss studying, but I do miss that weird and quiet connection I had made to that spot. I wonder who sits there now.

Portland, Oregon. If I were ordering this list, I feel like I would’ve put this one first or second.

He used to make me laugh so hard and was so brutally honest with me sometimes and was very blunt when he thought I was saying or doing something for extra special attention and I’m just so angry that that’s something I actually have to miss these days.