2020 is a write-off.

There are only three more weeks of 2020 left, and I’ve figured out how to make it worse. I’ll be ending the year sharing a one-bedroom suite with an ex-boyfriend.

Yup.

I don’t mean to sound flippant, but it’s something that happened. I can and will deal with it, but for the next while, I’m going to be riding a shitty wave of emotions. It wouldn’t be appropriate for me to outline the reasons for our split on the internet, so I’ll just cite irreconcilable differences.

I’ll need to move because our place is $1600 and I can’t afford that alone. The more affordable studio suites in Victoria are $1100-1300. That’ll get you slightly better than a carpeted closet with a hot plate. The rental market is so bleak, I may make a blog post critiquing the places I come across in my search as a way to cope.

I’m not looking for anything fancy, but I’m picky about the location. I’d prefer to stay in my current neighbourhood. Where I live there’s a good chance of hitting a peacock while riding a bicycle, which is not a part of its appeal but does make for a unique place to live. I do enjoy being by the sea and walking to work so much that it’d affect the quality of my life if I didn’t have these things.

The cats won’t be coming with me because they were Yann’s to begin with. This is the worst thing about the breakup. I’ve accepted everything else, but this hurts me every day. Even though Yann and I have been sleeping apart, at least one of the cats will spend the night with me, proof that they’ve bonded with me just as much.

When I have a new place, I’ll have an empty bed, and just that, because I can’t have the bed and couch. I’ve already started sleeping diagonally on the mattress: which is the smallest of small perks. I’m not even tall enough to benefit from this layout.

It’s been years since I’ve been on my own. Before that, I did whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, with whoever, or nobody, and I liked it. It’ll be a while before I get back there, especially with these physical distancing measures in place.

Without even the cats in bed, I’ll be laying in bed–diagonally, of course–thinking about the Black Lodge fire and how I’d have slept through that. I have a flashing fire alarm, but it’s installed in the hallway, and I don’t know if it’s enough to wake me up in the bedroom. I trust the cats to wake me up more than I trust the flashing alarm.

Sleepytime paranoia aside, I do well solo. I’m officially the youngest of three, but I was the only child for more than half my childhood for my siblings are ancient and left home early. I have so few memories of living with my sister, who was gone by the time I was 6. None of my friends were local as I was a cross-boundary student who did not participate in team sports. This has made me independent, which is good, except that it’s also why I’m terrible at sharing spaces.

Friends have suggested that I get a roommate to save on rent as if this was something new to consider. By friends, I mean people who don’t know me well enough to realize that I don’t live well with others. Besides, having roommates would mean not being able to do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, with whoever, or nobody. Last I had roommates, ten years ago, I couldn’t even keep one childhood toy in my bedroom without my shitty Sneakerhead roommate Tweeting about it.

This roommate created a giant collage of Richard Simmons with some kid’s head wedged between his leg meat and hung it in our guest room. I thought it was cool yet perplexing because this person also took an issue with Scoops, who lived in my bedroom.

The other roommate was jointly responsible for killing my giant millipede, Timk (the k is silent). I asked them to drop some vegetable scraps in Timk’s (the k is silent) tank while I was away in Beijing. When I returned, I found him in a death curl next to a shrivelled-up pickle (?!). I green binned him and didn’t mention it to the roommates.

Shortly after pickling my millipede, the roommates had the gall to tell me that they didn’t think I was a good fit and wanted me to move out. I hadn’t even been around for two months, and I was in China for a portion of that. It wasn’t that I’d done anything to upset them; they just disliked me that much. Not much of a confidence booster, eh?

And as Zoée pointed out when we hung out back in July, it sucks having to deal with being left out at work all day only to have to deal with that at home, too, because your roommates are hearing.

For the next while, I am stuck with a roommate who was once somebody with who I wanted to spend most of my time. Some days, I’m headstrong: MY MORALE CANNOT BE DESTROYED WITH CONVENTIONAL WEAPONS. Other days, or like, an hour ago, I find myself steeping in a bathtub filled with sadness and water that’s turned purple from my hair, which makes me feel pathetic and weird.

If I rent hazmat suits, would my friends be willing to hug me?