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How Much Space Does a Woman Need?
Not much, but it needs to be solely hers.
When people hear I am looking for a place to rent, they are inevitably kind.
“There is no need to search for an apartment,” says a family friend, the most benevolent I have met in the United States. “Just stay with us, we will make sure the kids don’t disturb you.”
I smile, my heart pooling into melted better at their warm invitation.
“Crash at my place,” a friend offers, generous enough to share her studio with enormous windows looking out at a busy intersection.
“I have space enough for all of us,” texts a friend of a friend whom I haven’t even met in real life.
The best proposal comes from my colleague. “I have an entire house lying vacant,” she reminds me gently.
And I am grateful, I truly am, at this torrent of affection in a city so far away from home.
Except that now I know how very much I need, crave, require my own space. For my sanity and everyone else’s.
I was not always like this, of course.
Growing up with seven family members in a four-roomed rented apartment in Kathmandu, the teeming capital of Nepal, I did not have a separate room. I wouldn’t have known what to do with a…
