Privacy and Life

Where does one end and the other begin?

There is someone new in my life. He takes up a pretty big space in my thoughts. It's hard to write around him but he is much more private than I am and wishes to maintain it.

In the past that has meant I have not written. It cannot mean that anymore.

Being involved with a writer means, to a certain extent, living with some public edge. It's like a live/work space. Sure there are private areas but there is overlap. Fact is, I write about intimate, domestic things here and for the moment anyway, my intimate domestic situation has changed.

In Ottawa, I'm alone. I live in my little space, do my little work and carry on. It was getting to the point where it was a little crazy making. Here was this person, 6 hours away, I could talk to him, sure, but it's not the same as spending time together, seeing if you're compatible in day to day life.

So I went to him.

He's got his own stuff going on. But it's not the same as my stuff. Anyway, I need to be out of the closet about this - about him, cause at the moment, he's at the center of my life. I'm at his house and it will be that way for a month, more or less.

Chances are good, the next few entries will be about things I notice in resuming the day to day routine of a relationship.

This morning I told him he was "my mother's revenge." It's true. He reminds me, gently and kindly, to do all the things my mother reminds me to do. Put the iron pills where you'll remember to take them, where you'll see them every day, make lists, put the keys on a hook by the door - all that stuff. And because it's coming from him and not from my mother, I really can't roll my eyes and sigh and say, "whatever." I have to give it space and respect and nine times out of ten, he's right.

My mother already loves him and they've never even met.

Now if I could only figure out how to get enough sleep.