Don't Put Your Past Life in a Mini Storage
The Worst Person In The World (2021) film by Joachim Trier
THINGS I LOVED, AND LOST IN A MINI-STORAGE FACILITY THAT WAS ROBBED
my dad's Rolex watch
my grandmother's coat (vintage, made in Hong Kong in the 1960's)
journals
notebooks with over 100 pages of started short stories
photographs = actual film photos
Annie Liebovitz signed book
This happened during a time when the world wasn't thriving, but surviving, and I was one of thousands that were moving apartments. I was in between housing during a break-up with the first real adult relationship of my life, which no one actually prepares you for and this was pre-Instagram. I couldn’t scroll to find a dozen quotes on self-care anecdotes to survive post breakup. Instead I was lured by billboards particularly the promo $10/mo fee at the Mini-Storage, which at the time sounded divine and was a life saver for me. I've never had to pay to put things in storage, so I was a bright, young novice at the business. I lacked the closeness of guy friends who normally would've helped me move, had I not ditched them in exchange for an older version of a male companion who turned out only satisfied me in bed. I felt alone, absolutely heartbroken, and very tired. The twenty-something guy working the front desk of the Mini-Storage explained to me that I needed to buy a lock, which I did. Was it a good enough lock? Obviously not.
“Sometimes, you just have to let the past go. ”
Within the next two weeks I had lost all my possessions. Yet, somehow I didn't lose my mind over it. Too concerned of settling into a new apartment, with a new roommate, a new bed, new bodega, new neighborhood, basically a new life. Doing all that while nursing a broken heart with uneventful bar crawls, because when you’re crashing on a friend’s sofa bed, returning “home” before 10pm only made me feel like a loser. Adulting seemed really hard at this coming-of-age part 2 stage in my life.
Comparing myself to the other girls at the office was plain dumb. That saying is true about how comparison is the thief of joy, but just a few weeks prior I was that girl that other girls compared themselves to. I had the cool, slightly older finance beau who picked up the drink checks and paid for all my cab rides. My friends got a kick that I was dating someone who didn’t have roommates. After a girls night out, my friends would share cabs heading east below 14th Street, while I rode solo uptown to his one-bedroom apartment on West 82nd and Central Park West. I lost myself to a different world, only to return below Houston Street with a rolling suitcase, an oversized Duane Reade bag and a backpack. I felt lost in a city where I knew every corner by heart.
