"li, have you ever thought about how relatively little of your adult full life you have spent living on your own?" yes i am thinking about it now.

not to say that it is more normal or not normal to live with other people, or not live with other people. many times in my life i have lived with other people and still had my own space and also shared space in mutual harmony (i would say that this was a privilege that i had back when i lived with my parents). and then there have been times when there was less harmony, or not enough space that was each person's own — a physical push towards enmeshment dynamics.

i have been living alone for the second time in my life ever for about a year now. (the first time was a period of a year and a half, about a decade ago.) there are a few things i have figured out, but i still feel... very far from figuring it out. small things about what i like or what i want or what i have the freedom to do. a lot of it involves rediscovering ways i enjoy spending my time and realizing i can change the space to support spending my time more in these ways. which is something i've ~always been conscious of, and enacted in certain ways, but. i feel like i am recognizing this with a new clarity tonight, the sort of clarity that reveals how little i know at all, how little i've known all this time.

there are many ways that i have changed. there are also many ways that i have stayed the same, and some of these i appreciate, though lately my attention has been mostly on the frustrating stuck and stubborn bits. i have lived with myself for so long and shouldn't i know myself by now? but i don't. i lose something familiar, i drop a mask; sometimes whatever follows snaps spontaneously into place, but more often i find illegibility. or emptiness.

well anyway. i lightly rearranged my living room and it's better now, although it's still not quite right. i think i can make it right, though. eventually. if i keep moving.