Thursday, December 30, 2010

It's easy when things are easy

I didn't realize how much my living situation was really stressing me out until now, about one month out of it, I thought to myself, "Gee, I haven't thought about such and such."

For almost two years since I moved out of my dear friends' house (which was the best and easiest living situation I had ever had) I've been struggling with living situations that really got me down.

What started as an effort to build a small community, or unit, morphed into a nightmare. I grew to dread almost every normal interaction, and ultimately gave up on the idea that the house where I lived could ever really feel like a home. I had initially put a good deal of effort into my "first" home on my own in the real world.. And in exchange I was met at best with a lack of compatibility--consideration--and at worst with violent hostility.

The last few months living in that house, I stopped eating dinner altogether. I just couldn't bear seeing anyone. I'd get home, perhaps take a plate of crackers up to my room, clean, read, fall asleep.

It took a very frightening wake up call to get the heck out, and while it was scary, traumatic, disruptive, I'm really glad that it happened. I feel safe now. I come home and think about what I will cook and whether anybody else will be there to share it with. I am here, and here I can mostly just be me, still mindful of basic considerations, but not so mindful as to fuck up every now and then (cough, drunken sleep walking?) and get away with a crimson face and a good laugh.

Bottom line: I hate it when people say that some hardship will toughen my hide, or for one reason or another I actually need things to be difficult. That's bullshit. It's easy when things are easy, and I'm not in any way wishing things were different.

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