Hotel Life

Hotels, and specifically hotel rooms, are one of my absolute favorite things. I have a very vivid memory from being maybe 13 or 14, watching tv and stumbling upon a movie that implanted a lasting idea in my head. John Malkovich was lounging around in bed in a glamorous hotel room as Andie MacDowell paced back and forth in some expensive-looking silk robe. That was all it took; I was hooked and soon became engrossed in watching. I soon realized that these two weren't merely vacationing in this fantastic hotel, they lived in it! The story no longer really mattered, what I came away with was this idea that you could actually live in a hotel.

A hotel room is a microcosm of another reality you get to inhabit for a little while. It isn't your real home, but for only a short time it’s all yours. It’s always magically clean and tidy. It's sometimes glamorous or interesting. It's also transient. It eludes to an idea of travel and uncovering maybe a mystery. I always loved that idea of living in a hotel. Living in another reality. Right now, I think I've accomplished just that.

Living with my parents -- in a home that is always meticulously clean, new, orderly, and with the nicest room and bathroom I've ever had complete with perfectly folded matching towels and fresh white sheets-- is like living in a hotel. It's an alternate reality; it isn't really my home, its only a short-lived solution, but right now its all mine. It's also not entirely real life.

Real life is not a tangible concept right now. One day I was in a partnership with the same person for 9 years, living a life that I thought was going to be sustained for the rest of my life. Thoughts of something other than that never seemed possible. I had wished for change, but not like this.

Don't get me wrong, this was the right thing to do in all aspects. But now I have to find my new reality. The lines of this new reality are sometimes blurry, feel transient; and, yes, are a bit of a mystery.