Tucked Away

I thought after this year that I had learned patience.
But apparently there are still a few areas that need working on.

*Ahem*

I've only ever lived alone once in my whole life.  It was when I was 21 and I hated it.  I hated being alone all the time.  The joke of it is if I had the financial means I would choose to live alone now.  I can think of very few things that aggravate me more than feeling like my space is being invaded. 

My current roommate is 86 years old so if ever there was the defense being set in their ways, she definitely warranted that.  But Grandma is a bit of a pistol, as am I, and she has some habits that are very reminiscent  of the male at my last residence and that's making the intensity of my heart palpitations increase.
She reads through my mail.  She goes through my garbage.  Yes, she looks through the garbage and if she thinks I shouldn't throw something away she takes it out of the garbage.  I reached for a pen that looked like one I'd thrown away and as I started writing with it there was no ink. 
Grandma, I asked, is this the pen I threw away? 
Yes, Grandma said, I rescued that from the trash.
I internally hit my head against the counter. 
Grandma the pen doesn't work, that's why I threw it away. 
I can't tell you how many different items she has removed from the trash after I've discarded them.  I can't handle it anymore.  It makes me feel like I'm either living with a looney tune or I am one.  I've started taking my garbage to work.  Seriously.  I'm afraid if it's not just kleenex or dental floss she's going  to start saving it and questioning me about things I want gone from my life.
It is the weirdest feeling to be living with someone who doesn't want me to get rid of anything.  At my old house I was constantly enduring complaints for having way too much of everything.

Once while still at home the head of the household got annoyed that I'd left something in the downstairs bathroom and so he put it in the garbage.  When I'd found it and confronted him about it, asking him why he hadn't just asked me to move the 'offensive' item he claimed he knew I'd see it in the trash.  Passive Aggressive 101, ladies and gentlemen.  Why communicate about an issue when you can act out on it? 
By the bye, the offensive item that warranted dumpster love?  A pink magic 8 ball.  On the counter.

*Cough*

I know that some people don't mean their actions to come off as crazy as they do but I found myself flashing back to old feelings and falling into old habits of wanting my space, of not wanting to be at home, of hiding out in my room.  I actually remember feeling similarly when I was living where I was before Grandma's.  People are not respectful of space.  People are needy and clingy and selfish and invasive.  The more I thought about it the more I thought people should be surprised when married couples don't act out in crazy ways not the other way around.  Why does it shock us when people suddenly do things that are uncharacteristic?  How can anyone handle living with someone who demands so much of them all the time?  And every couple has one of those.  You think you're safe, you think We're different but you're not.  There's the controller and the controlled, the aggressor and the passive.  And they each wear their role like a forlorn badge of dishonor, too stubborn to budge, too clueless to question.
I think that's why relationships are so frightening.
I am doomed to either be the one who has no boundaries or won't respect boundaries.

Oh, I know, I know. 
I'm different.
But I'm also unfortunately not ignorant so I don't have that bliss as a luxury.
I know that some people, some very rare, the few and far between are different.
I had seen this year how surprising people can be, how unorthodox relationships could feel healthier than ones I'd always known as safe.
I know things don't always have to be black and white.
But I didn't like feeling this way; feeling once again like the space I claimed as my own was not mine.

I think as I'm getting older my wants, my dreams are simplifying and I feel like that's a good thing.
There's a whole lot I don't know, specifics I'm not concerned about.
But I think all I want, all I really truly wanted, was a place that was mine, a home.
And maybe, in the most hopeful of fairytales, there would be someone there to share in it.