Chicken Soup for the Soul by Amy Newmark & Deborah Norville

Author:Amy Newmark & Deborah Norville
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chicken Soup for the Soul

Step Outside Your Comfort Zone

How Losing My Home Improved My Life

Coming out of your comfort zone is tough in the beginning, chaotic in the middle, and awesome in the end… because in the end, it shows you a whole new world.

~Manoj Arora

“I’m sorry, Lisa, but Debbie and I are going to move back into the house. You’re going to have to find another place to live.”

I couldn’t quite believe what Neil, my landlord, was telling me on that warm April night. I’m going to have to move? But I want to stay right here where I am. This is my home!

I had tears in my eyes, and so did he. I had lived on the first floor of his Staten Island two-family house for more than twelve years — longer than I had lived in any place since my childhood home. Ever since I moved back to the New York City area in 2000, Neil, a butcher in his fifties, had been like family to me.

Originally, Neil lived on the second floor of the house. But a few years ago, he had moved a few miles away into his girlfriend Debbie’s house. He renovated his old apartment and the attic, and rented out that space to some young members of the Coast Guard. But after a torn rotator cuff had ended his grocery career, he and Debbie had decided to sell her house and move back here.

Neil had never raised my rent, which was $750 a month, dirt-cheap for New York City. This was a big comfort when I was laid off from my newspaper job during the height of the recession and couldn’t find more than piecemeal work for two years. He promised me that I would always have a home, even if I had a hard time making the rent. However, I always made sure that I paid the rent before any other bill.

Now, I was still recovering from the recession, and I was going to have to find a new apartment and pay more. A lot more, I thought.

That was part of the problem. Neil was making a lot more money from the new tenants upstairs, so it made sense for him to keep those tenants and move into my apartment. He was very nice about it, and gave me six months to find a new place. Nevertheless, I was devastated and worried. I was so upset that I got into bed, pulled the covers over my head and cried. It was only 8:30 p.m., but I just wanted to go to sleep and forget this was happening.

Around 12:30 a.m., my upstairs neighbors had a few friends over, and they were making some noise. I stormed out of bed, opened my front door, and yelled up toward their apartment: “Can you keep it down already? I have to get up in five hours to go to work!”

I was so wound up afterward that I couldn’t sleep. So I called Jon, my best friend, to bemoan my bad fate.

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