In the end as it began. One empty apartment.

There’s a strange sort of peace that you feel when you move into a new apartment with nothing.

Maybe you have a mattress on the floor, a futon. A pillow. Maybe a chair and a coffee pot. The bare minimum.

The apartment echoes, no matter how little square footage your NYC apartment lists.

But your space is full of possibilities. A future yet to be discovered.

What color do I paint my walls? What kind of couch do I buy? What kind of TV can fit on my wall? What can I put on my walls to make this place my own?

How do I make this empty box a home?

I haven’t felt that feeling in more than 20 years. I moved into this building after a misunderstanding with some roommates in Hell’s kitchen ended in a forced evacuation at a time where a studio was $1600 to rent. That was 2002.

I called my dad, brilliant at finance despite never getting his college degree. Dad’s the best at getting the best deal on literally anything and is always dying to give anyone who will listen said advice.

I’ve joked with my friend Matthew Morgano that we need to get dad a book deal called “So what you gotta do is…” because that’s how every piece of advice.

Want to know where to get discount tires? “What you gotta do is…”

Want to know where the best buffets are in Vegas or Atlantic City? “What you gotta do is…”

Well dad’s advice this time was “What you gotta do is… buy a place, it’s cheaper to buy than to rent, a studio apartment will cost you $1200 a month instead of $1600 and a NYC will always increase in value.”

(My memory is poor but I’m 98% certain that this conversation was followed by an “I told you so” about how I SHOULD have bought my grandparent’s Lower East Side 1-bedroom in 1995 for the $32,000 it was offered to me for. He was right, and I’ve kicked myself many times for this. It was huge and had a balcony that overlooked the East River.)

Dad’s always right about these things, and so I did. At an even better price than I though, as the offer fell right around the same time as the World Trade Center. Everyone thought there would be a NYC exodus. They were wrong.

That was one of the best pieces of advice I have received to this day, and in case you’re wondering how a public-school teacher is able to afford a one-bedroom apartment in midtown Manhattan, you now have your answer.

I have lived in this building since a few months after 9-11. About 10 years ago, my next door neighbor offered to sell me her 1 bedroom at a good price because she was a schoolteacher with a home already in Lake George, so I moved next door in the middle of the night for a week or so with a cart. Didn’t even have to box things up.

This means that I haven’t really felt that feeling of “new car smell” of a new apartment since about 22 years ago.

This past Wednesday, I had almost everything I owned moved into a storage unit for who knows how long. I kept my bed, the very small TV that was in my bedroom that I hardly ever used, one uncomfortable wooden chair, and two TV trays: one for my laptop and the other for the TV. I’ve got some clothes, some food, a coffee machine and an air fryer.

It’s bare bones. It’s not enough to cook anything interesting, something I love to do.

I am eating everything I have in the house and will give everything else away when I find a renter. The cleaning lady has come, the building maintenance guy is painting the bedroom.

The cats have been permanently re-homed.

After 20 years, alpha to omega, I have returned to an empty apartment that I still own, but one that contains no remnants of me.

No remains of the things I carefully and lovingly adorned it with to make it mine.

To reflct who I am and what I love.

Nothing left that makes it a home.

With a few notable exceptions.

-A giant mermaid fake fresco I forgot to take down at the top of my chalkboard door.

-A message of love, in the form of a menu for a special dinner prepared for me by my friend La Ma Marianna in chalk that the cleaning lady never cleaned.

-And this treasured mug from the Museum of Neon that was the piece de resistance of the inspiration 4-fecta of museums I visited in Warsaw; the trip that inspired and compelled in me this journey I am about to embark upon.

I felt a pang of sadness taking down my vast and beloved collection of Mexican folk art. I felt barely anything saying goodbye to the sweetest cats I’ve ever known.

And looking at my bare walls, my empty apartment, sterile and practically pristine save for the few dregs of things I hadn’t yet packed…

I don’t feel sad. Or scared.

I feel… at peace.

Peace in the knowledge that I have zero doubt in my trajectory.

Peace with the choices I have made.

Peaceful in this minimalist space I incidentally created which is in complete opposition in which I have existed here in the last 20+ years.

I see emptiness. But I feel the same feeling as I must have when I first moved into my empty apartment in 2002.

A life full of possibilities. A future yet to be discovered. Just… somewhere else.