All these voices...

            Am I the only one who has that little voice inside her head? The one that says “No, don’t do that. Don’t go down that road, it’s much too scary. Stay where you are…”

            It’s weird, but I don’t realize how much I need time to myself until I get it. Those moments when I come back into my childhood room, surrounded by all the things on my walls and the evidence of 23 years of life that I feel my soul let out a deep sigh. It’s almost as if I can finally relax and let go of the motion I’ve been holding for the past week. The motion is so commonplace to me, so reflex, that I don’t even realize I’m doing it until it suddenly lets go.

            I can’t be the only introvert who feels this way. There’s an episode of Sex and the City that I adore where Carrie runs into this same issue. It’s in the third season, when Aiden moves into her apartment and suddenly, there’s someone there all the time. When you’re used to being alone, that can be jarring. And it’s not like  you don’t want that person there. You love them, you want to be with them, but you’re used to your space and a silence that you control. It’s disconcerting when someone else suddenly has a remote too.

            I’ve never lived totally alone, but I’ve almost always had space that had clear boundaries. In my room at my parents’ house, in my dorm rooms at school, there was always this clearly defined space that was mine and mine alone and I didn’t have to share it with a damn soul if I didn’t want to. That’s changing.

            I’m a highly sentimental person. I think back on my dorm rooms with fondness and I’m unsure of whether or not I’ll shed a tear when I take the final thing off my walls in my bedroom at my parents’ house. I’m also a creature of habit. So there’s this little voice in my head that says “You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to go into this new place permanently with this other person, even if he is Bear who you love and adore and want to build a future with. Don’t leave the familiar…”

            That voice, oddly enough, only comes around when my soul lets out that deep sigh and I’m completely alone. It’s easy enough to ignore it. The boxes are beginning to fill up, the dismantling has begun, and I’ve waited too long for this to stop now.

            So, with that being said, I’m going to go pop in that episode of Sex and the City I was describing and think of that cup of coffee I know is waiting for me on the other side of a nice, deep sleep.