When Reality Sets Back In

Despite this particular Monday being a holiday, I have not been spared the customary Monday kick-in-the-ass reality check. This time it's not about the reality of work. It's the reality of SCL moving out.

We had a truly lovely weekend of lounging around, making our fabulous homemade pizzas, watching The Office, drinking lots of wine, and getting sun by the pool. It was awesome to do nothing for a change. With all of the travel weekends have been so hectic for me over the last few months that it was a nice change of pace for both of us. It's also the most time SCL and I have spent together since the break-up. I think we both really enjoyed each other's company and can appreciate one another in a different way than we did before.

SCL's lease officially starts tomorrow, and while he's planning on moving his things gradually, it's still quite a shock to my system to watch him move things out. Today he bought new sheets and is taking them over to his new place. Does that mean he'll be sleeping there soon? Probably, at least some of the time. He also put up his dresser, which I'd been using, and our extra bed up on Craigslist, and within an hour someone wanted to buy the dresser. Tonight. That means I had to dump all of my stuff out of it, and of course, I don't have any place really convenient to put it all.

As I was pulling out my sweaters and socks and shoving them into storage bins, that's when it hit me. He's moving out. I'm moving out. We're not going to live together anymore. We won't have the luxury of an entire space together--no private kitchen to make pizza in, no living room to hang out in, no space that just belongs to us. Pretty soon we'll be back in the "yours and mine" stage, not the "ours." It's going to be fucking weird. As excited as I am to have my own space to make my own and call it home, I'm not sure if that outweighs the sense of loss I feel. It's only more difficult to consider this shift after spending a truly wonderful weekend together, remembering what it used to be like when things were good and wanting to truly believe that this time around, it would be different if we lived together. I'd try harder. We'd figure it out.

We've made this choice to live apart. I'm scared about that change for sure. But there's part of me that truly hopes that the (short) distance from one another will actually work to make the time we spend together better--that perhaps we'll appreciate the time we have and one another more, and that in fact we may want to spend more time together than before. And it'll be intentional rather than by default. I hope that's the case. I have to believe that it will be.