The Champagne of People

My partner and I are moving in together.  After 23 years of super-single-ness, and another year and a half living alone and dating with reckless abandon,  I am moving out of my shoebox apartment and into a lovely 1-bedroom with a lovely young man.

 

Three years ago, 105 pounds heavier and before any whiff of a sex-life, I didn’t know if I would ever be loved the way I wanted to be loved, the way I now find myself loved.  I didn’t trust that I’d find someone who wanted to wake up next to me every morning and come home to me every night, who wanted to sign on for my bad days and smelly breath and mood swings and decor-related stubbornness.  

 

And now someone has.  And I have to come to terms with that reality.  I have to take on a whole new batch of hopes and fears.  Fears that I could steel myself against, safe in my alone-ness, knowing that if I didn’t have love I couldn’t lose love.  Fears that I now must embrace as real possibilities should the worst happen.

 

As I prepare to take on the fears of togetherness, though, I have to finally accept the fear of alone-ness that I had been living with.  I didn’t realize until it was almost over, that the time I spent living alone had been steeped in anxiety. While I felt incredibly empowered living alone, and was in a constant state of growth, that growth was born out of many fundamental and important changes in my life (new career, new body, new sex life).  Looking back I can see that for a year and a half I was walking around untethered—emotionally, vocationally, and romantically.

 

In that time of untethered-ness, though, my home was my anchor.  I had complete control over that space in a time when I felt like I had control over virtually nothing else.  I am so thankful that I was able to provide myself not only a home, but a haven where I could allow myself to explore things that I had hoped for, but never experienced.  In many ways, by simply providing that home for myself, I opened doors I thought were shut permanently. Living alone in the Bay Area felt like such an achievement, something that had felt almost entirely out of reach, that when it became a reality I allowed myself to consider other realities that had previously seemed impossible.

 

I wouldn’t have said so a year ago, but part of me thought falling in love and finding a partner was impossible, too.  When I was fat, it was because I thought maybe no one would find me attractive. When I was less fat, and within “normal” sizes (i.e. I could *sometimes* shop at Anthropologie) I thought that maybe I was too difficult to find someone with whom I was compatible.  I have, more than once, been described as “enigmatic” and “intimidating”, and as I went on date after date, it felt like those qualities might be dealbreakers because no one ever seemed to want to move past date #3 (despite my DAZZLING personality).

 

So, my home also became my castle.  I built it up around myself, the Queen I knew myself to be, and told myself that if I could pay for a home in the country's most expensive city all by myself, I didn’t need anyone else.  My apartment became almost part of my personality, something that made me interesting at cocktail parties: “No roommates? Woooww, that must be nice.”

 

It was nice.  But then I did find someone else.  Someone who turned “enigmatic” and “intimidating” into “interesting” and “impressive”.  Someone who valued me and my space, but at the same time welcomed me into his space and, now, wanted to join those spaces.  So we did.

 

I am thankful for that period alone-ness for many reasons, but mostly, and perhaps most obviously, because going through the tough things alone is the worst of the worst.  Yes, together-ness and relationships and space-sharing have their own problems, but at the end of the day, in togetherness, you have a partner. In alone-ness you do not. You come home to your castle, and as safe and cozy as it is, you have to make the hard decisions, and then give your self a pep-talk when you immediately regret those decisions.  

 

But now I know I can do it.  So if my fears about togetherness ever came true (which I deeply hope they do not), I know I will be ok. I have already survived the aloneness.