Gettin' a move on.

I'd always been scared to live alone. I would get quite worked up about it if pressed for reasons, because I felt it was an unnatural state to exist in-no one to chat with in the kitchen? No one to share cleaning duties with? No one to borrow a banana from? It struck me that single dwellers lived in a kind of social void that was unhealthy and irritatingly selfish. I would get lonely just thinking about it. Which is not to say I didn't. It's inevitable that when you live with a gamut of people, from one other, to seven others, some lovely, some certifiable, you will contemplate getting away from it all. You will imagine a large main floor one bedroom with room for a studio and a pony, a backyard for your dog to play in, and friends over for dinner all the time in your spacious and ever-stocked kitchen, complete with wine rack and boughs of hanging garlic and herbs growing on the sills of large, eastward facing windows. Yes? But for me, fear and finances kept me in the realm of multiple-dweller abodes, and for the most part, quite happily.

It was last year that I changed my entire outlook. After all the 'bumping heads' with roommates over the years, and being in a semi-new relationship which needed privacy and space, I decided to move out. On my own. Only I was with someone, and I just assumed he would be at my house, or I would be at his house, so I wouldn't really be alone. I wasn't scared, I was exhilarated, I felt brave and independant. A week before I was scheduled to move to my fabulous basement apartment for one plus guest, we broke up. And so, freshly single, freshly moved and living alone, I spent the better part of my first week in my basement apartment terrified. Quaking in fear amidst strange refridgerator sounds and the scraping of chairs across the upstairs floors that were my ceilings. I'd even bought a double bed, figuring it was time to upgrade from my childhood single mattress, because I had a boyfriend. After it was delivered, and I'd assembled it, minus one missing bolt(I'm still waiting for the whole thing to fall apart) I lay there, alone, and let it in. The loneliness that issues from solitary living. There was more than enough room for it in my bed. I wondered if I'd made a terrible mistake. I wanted my mom.

But a funny thing happened as I struggled along, alone. I found big reserves of time, time I could use any way I wanted! I could write, I could draw, I could use all the hot water. I had to make an effort now to see my friends, but without the social safety net of roommates, I did exactly that. I made my neighbourhood a home, by going to the same fruit market every week, where there are usually more flies than fruit. Or to the video store across the street, where the fellows always let me off my late fees and laugh at my corny jokes. Or to the cd/book shop down the way where the employees are all bashful politeness and occasionally steer me away from bad recordings I pick up. Relations with my landlord and his wife have been terrific, they took on my various pest control problems as their own, and in return for my never complaining about the frequent, early morning furniture moving, they never complain about my frequent, all day loud music. This living alone lark has grown on me, and grown me up. I've come to rely on myself for organizing my time, entertainment, toilet paper.

But there is one downside to this kind of freedom and independance. And that is, that with every relationship, whether with another person, or just yourself, there is the tendancy to get a little too comfortable. To let loose those behaviours you were taught to suppress for the benefit of social progress and development. For example, there is this pair of pants. They are made of flannel. That's not the worst part. They are made of flannel, and I have loafed in them so much, the bum reaches down to the back of my knees. It's not pretty, and I wear them all the time. I come in from work, take off the pants I'm wearing, and on go the saggy bum pants. I would never wear such a thing in public, but in my house, there's no need for style. I have no one to impress here. There is also the eating of food in the fridge. Yes, I mean opening the fridge, getting a fork, and opening a container of food and eating it with the fridge door open. Why I can't sit down like a normal person at a table is beyond me, it's like I'm fooling myself into thinking I'm not really eating if I'm still in the fridge, which is supposed to be a decision-making area only. There is the not-as-infrequent-as-I'd-like renegade hair removal, grooming for the sake of avoiding social humiliation, like errant chin hairs, or freakishly long eyebrows, like Larry Hagman/J.R. Ewing on Dallas. And there's the dancing. I know we all do this, turn music up really loud and dance in our rooms, but this is the reason I don't dance at shows or clubs, because I know what I look like when I let loose, and it's alarming. If I was dating me, I'd be a little turned off by now. I'd want to put some of the mystery back where I found it.

I find myself missing those impromptu chats or nights out with roommates. I worry I'm becoming too set in my ways, too unyielding, too independant. It's really kind of fun calling home to ask if you need to buy milk, or if you should pick up a movie. Or when a roommate crosses the border of cohabitant into the kingdom of friendship, that's a bit of magic. I suppose it's a good thing, to get the chance to really see yourself uncensored, unguarded, unkempt. I think everyone should try it. And at the end of the day, it is lovely to come home and strip off all the trappings and pretenses of control, out of plain sight. But it's far more humbling, somewhat endearing, and definately braver to let yourself be really seen. Just as you unstylishly, imperfectly are.