Living Space: On Learning What I Can Share
For over a year and a half, the separate worlds of our work, home, school, and social lives have folded in on each other. The ramifications of this have yet to be fully felt much less addressed.
Shrinking social circles, delayed education, a lack of communal grieving, financial instability, and the challenging transition of working from home, may vary by individual but they are shared societal struggles. Added to these are our particular personal challenges that the pandemic has stressed.
I struggle with intimate relationships. I always have. My first real fully realized relationship did not occur until my mid-twenties. And there remained firm lines of separation I kept in place. Over time I started to get outside feedback on a specific line.
“Why don’t you live with your partner?”
People would ask the question out of genuine confusion more than judgment. Especially at around the seven-year mark. I was now in my thirties, had been in a relationship for almost a decade. And I was living in one of the most expensive cities in North America. The practicality of the last point was enough to make people wonder. My want for my own space was coming at a steep cost. Ultimately, it was the selling of the apartment complex I was living in to a developer, and the seemingly inevitable renoviction, that…
