I want to go home.

But… I am home.

I moved in with The New Guy last week – and I’ve literally cried every single day since. If someone had told me that with each passing year I spent alone, living with someone would be that much more difficult, I probably wouldn’t have listened, but maybe I would have shed a few less tears.

As I watched the movers pack the last box of my independence into the truck, I knew that life as I knew it had just changed forever. My perfect, neat and tidy little beach apartment that I loved so much was about to be swallowed up in the chaos of a bachelor household sixty miles away – and so was I. And I can’t help it, but I’m feeling every devastating bit of the loss. With each enormous box coming through his door, I watched TNG’s eyes grow wider as he finally wondered aloud what I had been thinking for months – where in the hell was all of this shit going to go? Simply put, there was no room for me in his house. And, there still isn’t… I think it’s partially due to the fact that he hasn’t physically made much room for me, and partly because I haven’t emotionally made any room for myself.

The only way to describe it is that I feel like I’m visiting. My mail is lost in a black hole somewhere, my friends won’t call me anymore, and I’m being watched – all the time. Suddenly the romantic fantasy land I was living in during my year of pre-cohabitation bliss was gone – poof. And it’s weird, it’s like my fabulous relationship got lost in the move too. I’m suddenly living with more than one guy… sometimes he’s my brother, sometimes he’s my lover, but most of the time he’s my father. Because that’s exactly how I feel – like a child, not wanting to disappoint the grownups. I find myself asking him a million questions: “Is this okay?” “Should I put this here?” “Where do you want this?” I know it’s supposed to be my house now too. But it’s not. As I watched his cat claw my pristine furniture, I couldn’t help but feel like she was sending me a message – I don’t belong here.

I’ve cried more in the last week than I have in the last year. At first it was just a quick, quiet little muffled cry hiding in my closet or my office. By day five it became a full-on, snot-nosed wet-neck sob into my pillow while in the fetal position on the bed at 7:30pm. Yes, I’m exhausted. Yes, I’m misfiring on all cylinders when it comes to work lately (direct quote from a big boss – “Your writer leaves much to be desired…”) and yes, I’m sad and I’m lonely and I miss my friends and my old life. But the real reason I’ve been crying?

I’m envious.

Now that we’re living in the same household, I actually get to see how different we are. I’m neurotic and seemingly unstable, and everything rolls off his back like water off a duck. I worry about what people think, and it affects everything I do – it always has. He doesn’t have a care in the world, especially when it comes to what people think. NOTHING gets this guy down. I knew this all along, but now that I’m living a foot away and can watch it up close and personal, it totally pisses me off. I suck at time management. I always have. I procrastinate and then I stress about procrastinating, and then I stress some more, until I work myself into a total frenzy, convincing myself that I’m a total failure until I eventually force myself to succeed. He somehow manages to get his work done, mow the lawn, go for a run and then winds up sitting in the hot tub drinking wine and reading a book by day’s end. Meanwhile, I’ve said yes to 50 people who I don’t want to disappoint and I suffer. Oh, how I suffer. Got a dictionary? Look up the word martyr, and my picture is right there, next to my mother’s.

Maybe it’s all one big lesson. Maybe TNG was put in my life to teach me to be different. It’s 9pm and I haven’t cried yet today. So I guess things are looking up.

If I could just get some mail.