No pics for this one guys. I am feeling too wistful for such things :D.

Well, it’s begun. This weekend my friends brought me boxes. I mucked out my fridge. I went through my clothes and tossed those that I forgot I even had. I’ve begun the painstaking process of letting everyone in the world know that I will soon be at a new address.

And it finally dawned on me that in just under a month I would be leaving my Test Chamber.

I love my apartment. I wasn’t quite ready to say goodbye to it yet. Heck, I literally physically raced someone to get it in the first place. Okay…they didn’t know it was racing…but it totally was, I am a badass power walker and suspected they were there for the same apartment…and I was right!

I was terribly scared. It was the first time in my life I didn’t have a roommate (I even shared a bedroom until 17), my first space I could truly call my own, at a time when I really needed to be on my own. In the past, the choice to move was never really a choice. It always came about because a school term ended, or a roommate moved in with her boyfriend, or the house was suddenly being sold. The only other time I made the conscious choice to uproot was when I decided to leave Guelph. Oddly, even though it’s in the same city, it’s just as tough to say goodbye.

I put down roots pretty quickly. I get attached. I’ve lived in this neighbourhood for six years now in two different apartments. The Test Chamber was an experiment in so many ways. It was when I started to experiment financially, to see if I could manage to afford an apartment on my own (answer: yes, I could, but not without being down to the wire). It was a creative experiment when I began to dabble more seriously in writing. It was the place where I helped to create an entire musical. It was my own quiet little space where I learned to be myself.

I won’t miss the constant sounds of construction. Or how narrow my kitchen seems. I won’t miss the extreme heat of the summers. I won’t miss the 24/7 wind howling in the winter. I won’t miss the dust that accumulates so quickly in the higher places of a city. I definitely won’t miss the pigeons.

But I will miss my jogging trail. I will miss my weekly visits to the cemetery. I will miss the hawk that wakes me up in the morning. I will miss the lovely sunlight and watching thunderstorms from my balcony. I will miss being able to walk down the street to visit Dan or Jen. I will miss walking through the park and watching dogs jump and children play. I will miss my big wood door with its hobbit-esque doorknob and the parquet floors. I will miss my plants, which certainly can’t follow me to a basement apartment. I will even miss the sound of the subway, which was a comfort as I went to sleep.

I am excited for a bit of change and what that might bring. But as I look around me at the place that I made my home, I am still a little sad that I had to leave it.

I know that once it happens it will be easier. I know it’s just a place. I know I made the right decision, impulsive as it seemed at the time. I know that once I get to where I’m going I will quickly make a new home and fall in love all over again. But that doesn’t mean I can’t be a little sad in the short term.

I swear my posts will get less mushy. I think I will do one more Whitless Letter before I must leave the Chamber forever. Stay tuned for that.

But for now, Farewell, Test Chamber! You were so very awesome and I couldn’t be more grateful for that.