DD4

I have to warn you, I’ve never been this cheesy before, I’ve also never really mourned a place like this. Maybe except Nice. Carry on.

By the time you read this, I will have already fully moved out of my apartment. It’s been a rushed process — exhausting, bittersweet — and seeing it slowly get emptier and emptier has made my chest ache in ways I didn’t expect. It’s funny how a space can fill up your life so much that even empty, it feels heavier than when it was full.

I moved into DD4 just before my 22nd birthday. At the time, life felt like walking across a tightrope blindfolded. I was a law student, still unsure of her career path (still kind of am), in a new relationship after spending a year mostly catatonically heartbroken…or numb? Honestly, I can’t even tell the difference anymore. I had friends I tried to bring together like scattered puzzle pieces that never really fit together. Everything was shifting. Everything was fragile. And under all of it, I carried the deep, silent exhaustion of someone who had never been able to stay.

Because staying had never been an option for me. Not growing up, not anywhere. I moved around so often — countries, cities, houses — that I learned early not to unpack too deeply, not to love a space too much. I lived in a constant state of readiness. Always waiting for the next box to pack, the next place to call “temporary home.” Even in the places that were supposed to be mine, I never truly let my guard down.

And then, somehow, there was DD4. It wasn’t fancy. It wasn’t big. It wasn’t some Instagram-worthy apartment with tall windows and marble countertops. It’s actually underwhelming. But it was mine. It was safe. And more importantly, it was still. For the first time, the ground under my feet didn’t feel like it was about to fall away. For the first time, I caught myself saying something I had never said before: “I can’t wait to go home.”

Home. That word never ever lived in my mouth comfortably. I had never known what it was to long for my bed, to miss the quiet rituals of my own space. Suddenly, I was making pasta almost every day, doing Sunday resets, lighting candles on Thursdays just because. Slowly, carefully, I stitched small moments of safety into my life, and my soul — restless for so long — began to exhale.

DD4 became a cocoon. Friendship naps on the floor in between classes. Shared meals that nourished more than our bodies. Arguments and slammed doors. Apologies and ugly laughter. Evenings spent deep in conversation over mismatched mugs. Sundays spent cleaning and daydreaming. It became a place where I could break and still be held.

In that apartment, I stopped surviving and started living. It’s so corny but I learned that home wasn’t about the size of the space or how good it looked on the outside — it was about the life you built inside it. 

I started dreaming differently, too. Dreams that weren’t about running, escaping, starting over somewhere else. Dreams rooted in staying. I dreamt of a little girl toddling down the hallway, a lover pressing a kiss to my forehead as I read on the couch. I dreamt of friends tangled in laughter in my living room, of painting by the window with no one to impress but myself. Every single one of those dreams came true.

Now, I’m almost a quarter of a century old. Every day, I feel my prefrontal cortex warming up — unfortunately, there’s no “off” button for that. I have an almost one-year-old daughter. I’m engaged. And all of it — all of it — happened in DD4.

Leaving feels impossible in some ways because it isn’t just about packing up furniture and taking down picture frames. It’s about leaving the first place that ever made me feel safe. It’s about saying goodbye to a version of myself that needed that safety so desperately. It’s about grieving the girl who walked into that apartment exhausted and unsure, and honoring the woman who is walking out stronger, softer, and somehow still standing.

Nobody tells you how hard it is to leave your first real home. Nobody tells you that the grief feels heavier than the boxes stacked at the door. Nobody tells you that you can love a space so much it becomes part of your skin.

I always called that apartment The Freezer — no matter the season, it was always cold, rain or shine. But DD4 was so much more than a poorly insulated box; it was a dreamcatcher. My solace. It was the place that caught every version of me that dared to hope for more. It was the place that taught me what it means to stay — not just in a space, but in myself.