For the next three months, I’m living with three of my college girl friends in Wilmington, North Carolina. We found an apartment to rent for the summer back in March, and then found jobs in restaurants and tennis clubs. What drove us to the beach for the summer was the realization that our freshman year in college was the first time either of us had lived away from our parents, and we loved it. During the year, we had formed our own habits without their influence. Simple choices: when and what to eat, when to stay in or go out--were entirely up to us now. However, neither of us has ever lived on our own. It’s entirely different to move into a furnished closet of a dorm room than to find an apartment in a different city, check and double check to make sure your minimum wage job covers your rent and power bills and realize that said apartment is completely unfurnished a week before you move in. My friends and I realized we had chosen to disregard our comfortable lives under the safety umbrella of our parents and move across the state, thinking that a year in college had adequately prepared us for this experience. Not in spite of this terrifying independence, but because of this, this summer will be one of the most rewarding times in my life: the perfect balance between freedom and responsibility. The freedom to be 19 and make coffee tables out of four cinder blocks and a piece of wood, but the responsibility to pick up an undesirable shift at work while my friends relax on the beach. For the next three months, I’m learning how to live on my own through trial and error. So far, the greatest and worst thing about independence: the grocery store.
A common choice in high school was whether to eat out and spend my allowance, or stay in and eat leftovers from the fridge. The latter was free for me, thanks to my parents’ frequent grocery store runs and meal prep, so I often chose to graze in the kitchen and spend my money on more tangible matters. That choice is non-existent in Wilmington. The first trip to the grocery store to stock our empty apartment is the most expensive meal I’ve ever eaten. My entire paycheck goes to the most unrewarding trip to Harris Teeter, I need everything from salt and pepper to PAM to pickles.
The next hardest part is actually putting something together from the endless options of ingredients in the grocery story. I don’t know what to make for even one dinner, let alone the dozens of other meals I’ll need to prepare when I don’t want to eat out. I say a silent thank you to my mom for somehow cooking dinner every night for my dad, brother and me. Maybe I should have printed out a couple recipes, but the idea of buying four different spices and using ¼ teaspoon of each for a single casserole isn’t too appealing to my wallet. That organic, gluten-free, preservative-free, artificial sweeteners-free, non-GMO box of crackers isn’t so appealing, either. I just about abandon the idea of being healthy this summer and look up where I can grab the nearest $5 Cook Out tray, doubled up with hushpuppies.
I decide pasta is a good compromise. Healthy, fast, and only two ingredients: penne and red sauce. As I stand in the check out line, I realize that I’m closer in age to the parents than the kids. I remember jumping from one white tile to the next in the grocery store, warning my brother to avoid the grey “lava” tiles that would burn our feet. Now, I just planned a dinner for my apartment, and even bought vegetables for a side salad. My 8-year-old self would hate this adult version of me; I’ve switched my allegiance to the parents.
I finish checking out, hoping that I just signed up for a rewards card with a savings rate of 15 percent and not a credit card with an interest rate of 15 percent. Walking into my apartment and unloading the groceries with my friends may seem trivial, but living on my own feels more real and exciting than even an hour ago. My friends and I did not exactly know that living on our own would be so different than living in a dorm room, but I feel a sense of accomplishment after my grocery store run. I’m even proud that I thought to make pasta, and I know I can handle living on my own.
As I open up my empty cabinets, I realize one more thing: I need a pot to make pasta.
