I hate my apartment. Honestly and truthfully, my resentment flows beyond the realm of exaggeration; I cannot exaggerate enough, I simply HATE this place. I would like to challenge the person who designed the building and the individual apartments to spend just one week here and see if he doesn't lose his mind. This place is a testament to the fact that college kids are not sufficient enough to live on their own. I would say that it's an unfair accusation of the building designers who thought that, as the building would more than likely be inhabited entirely by college students, there would be no need for life-sized stoves or sinks. Who cooks in college? I imagine them saying "Why would they need a big sink? It's not like they wash any dishes, just give em a dishwasher!" As I said before, this may seem like an unfair assumption on their part, but the sad fact is, no one else in my building seems to care at all! They think this place is "cool." I'm sure they tell others "I live in 'The Lofts'" with pride, while I almost always add, "unfortunately" to my statement.
You see, I cook. Daily! And I use things like pots and pans which cannot be put in the dishwasher so I have to struggle to wash them in my mini sink, as, to my dismay, water flows over the sides and over the counters and then down into that impossible to reach crack between my refrigerator and stove, where I cringe to imagine it pools and festers.
I think of last year in my lovely White House apartment where I held many dinner parties and get togethers and had a bedroom. As I rented this place sight unseen, I guess I didn't understand that by "one-bedroom apartment," what the leasing agent really meant was two small rooms connected by a "kitchen." And as far as natural light goes, the front room is not so bad, but I have to keep a light on constantly in my "bedroom" in order to function in there.
The only redeeming quality of my little dungeon is the windows. In my "living room," I have two huge windows that open out onto Laclede. In keeping with the quality of the building, the panes of glass are so thin that I am plagued nightly by the sounds of sirens blaring by and any and all traffic on the street, but when I'm not sleeping I actually enjoy the sounds of the city.
I am a nature loving individual, but I actually prefer the sounds of the cars passing by to the sounds of the waves. There's something about the nitty gritty city life, in contrast with the quiet simplicity of a home in the country or on the beach, that to me is just so much more real. Maybe I've been reading too much Hawthorne lately, but when I think of places like Door County, and simple summer towns, I can't help but think "this is not real life." At least I think life shouldn't be so simple. You shouldn't be able to leave your keys in the car with the engine running as you run into the neighborhood store for a pop. You shouldn't know everybody you see walking down the street. These are all very nice and sweet for a while, but if you live like that forever you cannot develop an important part of your individuality. You won't have a thick skin. If, God forbid, your car does one day get stolen you won't know what to do.
What it comes down to, really, is ignorance. And thats what disturbs me most about this building- that the tenants down the hall are ignorant to the fact that this place sucks. They've never needed to learn how to cook so they don't know their stoves are just one step above an easy-bake oven. They think that since gas and electric are all included in the monthly rent they are getting a great deal! When really, the ridiculously inflated rental rates reflect that what we're actually getting is screwed over.
So until May I will grin and bear it, cursing all the mini-disasters that got me stuck here in the first place. I'll sit next to my wonderfully large windows and listen to the cars going by and dream of the day I'll live in a real apartment, on a real street, in a real city, with real things to complain about.
