I walked into the coffee shop on the bottom floor of the apartment building that I had moved out of 9 months prior. I look around and see myself seated at every booth- talking, writing, working (sometimes). I always referenced this 3 year chapter of my life in this apartment building as The Apartments with the Green Cabinets. 

I moved to Chicago almost 4 years ago after spending a year in Scottsdale, Arizona after college (that chapter I like to call It’s Harder to Breathe in the Desert). I came to Chicago excited, ambitious, and maybe a little bit broken. It was going to be my first time living alone, in a big city, in an apartment that I had never seen in person before. When I walked into the 400 sq ft studio apartment for the first time, I cried. It seemed so much smaller than it had looked on the facetime; after the initial shock, I sat on the floor, surrounded by my stuff, an air mattress and ordered ramen. All that mattered was that it was mine. 

After a year in what all my friends and family called “the tiny home,” I moved down a floor into an apartment with a bedroom door. I was so excited to gain 100 sq ft and a small coat closet that I stayed for 2 more years. Still surrounded by the same green cabinets and exposed brick, I learned so much about myself here and inched closer to the person I am today. It’s wild to think that I was her only nine months ago, yet I feel so different now—older, maybe? Wiser? I’m not entirely sure, but definitely changed. 

Now that I’m in my late 20s, I think constantly about the people who remind me that your 20s are for learning. I want to kiss everyone who tells me I’m still young, because there are so many moments when I feel like I should have figured it out by now. That pressure creeps in quietly but quickly. But then I look back at the moments in the apartments with the green cabinets- the late nights, the quiet mornings, the versions of myself I was trying on. I think about the lessons the universe dropped into my lap, the ones I didn’t realize I already knew the answers to until I was living them. And it comforts me. It reminds me that growth isn’t loud or sudden; it’s subtle, often only visible in hindsight. Maybe that’s the whole point of this age: to learn, unlearn, and relearn until things start making sense in their own time.

Coming back to this coffee shop, I can finally appreciate the environments that shaped me. I wish I could sit down in the same booth I sat in three years ago and tell her that everything unfolds in its own time. That she’ll learn to trust herself more, and that even nine months of growth can turn her into a new version, who is ready for a new chapter. It’s important to know that you do get over things, that new characters, plots, and loves will arrive exactly when they’re meant to. And through it all, you’ll always be grateful for the person you became in that little kitchen with the green cabinets.