Our Sacred Little Infinities

"There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities."

- The Fault in Our Stars

I'm fascinated by -- and a believer in -- the idea that sometimes it's the smallest portions of our lives that end up making the biggest impact. Take relationships, for example....we tend to try and measure them by length.

"We broke up."
"Oh....how long were you together?"

...like you can always measure the bad by the # of days the good occupied. Sometimes true, but not always.

But gosh, this post isn't about dating. It's actually about a weird little apartment in south Scottsdale, Arizona. The one near the zoo and across the street from the strip club.

There is a condo in south Scottsdale that I lived in for three years. It's the last place I lived before leaving for California, and it's seen a lot.....A LOT....of my important life moments and relationships come and go.

But this post isn't about that condo, or those three years. It's about the six months before those three years, just up the street, in a weird little apartment.

It was the first place I moved after college, other than a brief stay at my parents' house right after graduation (during which time I looked for jobs and ate my mom's food.....and watched four or five seasons of Lost on DVD).

This weird little apartment came about randomly one day.

My friend Rebecca (Reebs) called me and said, "Let's go visit Scottsdale." Which turned into....looking at apartments in Scottsdale. Which turned into....signing a lease the next day for an apartment in Scottsdale. What just happened? (I kind of have a thing for making big life decisions with spur-of-the-moment housing decisions. No complaints yet.)

This apartment was overpriced for what we were getting. It had loud neighbors and smelled like cigarette smoke. Things we did not have in this apartment: a microwave, a washer/dryer, a TV, Internet (and neither of us had smart phones at the time, holla 2009).....and also one time there was a naked woman in the hot tub late at night, and a terrifying man lurking in the laundry room.

And I honestly rank this as one of the happiest times of my life.

Those six months were full of much laughter, many late-night chats and In 'n Out french fry runs, endless episodes of Gilmore Girls on a small laptop screen, the one time Reebs locked me outside with my cell phone until I called a boy and asked him out (gosh, I sweat just thinking about that), many random first dates, dancing in the living room at 7am on my birthday to "You Make My Dreams Come True," finally cleaning the entire apartment (let's just say we weren't the cleanest gals around) to 70s disco music, and mannnyyy long discussions about the woeful state of both of our recently graduated, no-idea-what-we-were-doing-with-our-careers-or-anything life situations.

We only lived there for 6 months, before I moved up the street into the aforementioned condo and Reebs ran off to almost-Boston but actually back-to-Gilbert-AZ and then got herself married and ultimately ended up in Washington D.C.

When I think back on this little phase of life, I feel this....REVERENCE...for it. It actually wasn't so much WHAT happened during that angsty time period, but more of what was ABOUT to happen. Because what was about to happen was....everything. My whole life was still ahead of me, none of it had been written yet, and the world was my starry-eyed oyster.

So when I think about that part of my life, I don't really think about the loud neighbors or the lack of Internet and microwave. I mostly just feel like my heart is going to swell out of my chest with nostalgia.

So yeah, it was a small infinity. But also a big one.

Do you have any sacred little life spaces like this one?