This should be a happy time.
Springtime: the weather is warm and the world is new. The road leading to the house where we live (WE, at long last, I have settled down) is dappled with sunshine and good smells, and meanders gently to a break in the woods where a house shaded by big trees, surrounded by buttercups, sits charmingly off-center in the big yard. There are no more apartments. There are no more 14 hour days with the deceased, since there is little to come home to but the cats. The two oldest persevere on, I promised them I would never suffer them a move again, after the last to a yellow country cottage full of light and surrounded by wild raspberries and honeysuckle. I have suffered them to move, yet again, in the interest of We. We have been dating for two years, and now are several months engaged. He had to move in March, my lease was coming up for renewal, I made a decision on impulse and am regretful of the choice since We seems so jarring compared to the comfortable companionship of Us on the weekends spent together.
We work far too much, cook our own dinners at unpredictable hours, or subsist on junk food because who can be bothered to cook, and drink nightly until the opposite sides of the bed take us to the next bleary morning. It's hard to remember what Love feels like. Is it picking up ice cream and beer because you're thinking of them? Is it tortilla chips and salsa after I said I didn't want takeout? Is it refilling the kettle after making the morning coffee because they might want one more cup? Is Love Suffering, but Together?
A house full of all the things that I love, slowly creeping from boxes and finding their space amongst the Other Half, and I try to escape the reality of my current situation every night. A house that I stare ruefully from the windows of, not quite able to participate in the world it inhabits. I am a self-made ghost, one foot in the grave I dug by hand, head in a fog of my own devices. Never truly drunk, but always a bit hungover.
A house that I cannot seem to make feel like a Home. In the privacy of my own thoughts, I hate it here.
I flinch away from that thought, not even able to admit it to myself. Its just temporary, it just needs some work, I just need to put some time and effort and grace into coexisting with the things I cannot change. I just need to hang some pictures, find a spot just for me. I just need to put more effort into healthy cooking and drinking less. I just ... I just ... it's just ... just. What is just? What is fair? What is present? What is equitable about this living situation? I just need to try harder to be present because it's not fair to my love that I resent him so much for uprooting our lives.
I just need somewhere that I can express all of these feelings when it feels like too much.
It's hard to find the positives right now, when two months in, we haven't even found places to unpack all of the boxes. What's the point of bringing the artwork home to hang when we don't even know what furniture is staying, or where it will be? It all feels so pointless right now. He brings me flowers and I immediately realize that they are infested with weevils and poisonous to cats. The peonies are relegated to the table outside, and the next day, the storms scatter the pretty pink petals all over the yard.
What will become of us? I think, as I stare out of the kitchen window, trying to feel some measure of joy in the lush green view. My coffee brews, and I have nowhere to sit and drink it without my work clothes smelling of dog, of dirty laundry, of stress-sweat that smacks of testosterone, so I stand, ill at ease.
What is love, and what is Love? Am truly I meant to be alone?