home is where the heart is (and I can't find your pulse)

19th Jun, 2025

im moving house in the next 6 days.

it's happened kinda suddenly. A few weeks ago, I was vaguely aware of some tension between my other housemates, but that just happens sometimes, so I didn't tune into it too much. Until someone sent a Very message in the group chat, and I realised it was a bit bigger than before. I don't remember who, or what the message was anymore. doesn't matter.

turns out the person I live upstairs with (who I never knew how to feel about) had been doing quite a lot of things to severely upset my downstairs housemates (who I like a lot). And of course, upset people tend to say upsetting things, so despite my very late efforts to interject, mediate, calm the situation down, everything kept escalating. people yelled a lot, and then stopped talking entirely. Various reasonable requests were met with unreasonable excuses.

My downstairs housemates found somewhere else to live. They moved out over the last two days, although I've avoided being home.

I wasn't really sure what to do. I like where I'm living. I was capable of sorta maintaining my own peace with things, I thought. But it was gonna be a very different house.

And then the upstairs housemate decided I'd thrown my lot in with the downstairs housemates, and things got uncomfortable for me too. side effect of this being that I figured I might as well commit to picking a side with the housemates I liked, who were leaving, since someone else had picked my side for me anyway. Thus I started inadvertently making life difficult for the person who had decided based on very little evidence that I was against her.

there's absolutely a metaphor it that. it's not even particularly subtle.

so now I'm moving again, with very little time to prepare or acclimatise myself to that fact. Last time I had to do this, it was roughly 3 months worth of stressful lease negotiations and finding a new place and figuring out how the fuck I was going to afford moving and get the previous place suitable for vacancy and continue to juggle everything else that was going wrong with my life at the time.

The answer is that I only just managed, mostly due to the help of various lovely friends.

I don't want to do this.

I had two options for where I was going to move to this time, both of which sorta just... materialised exactly when needed, so at least that was WAY less stressful. Except, the place I think I would prefer has... some pros and cons to it, to stick to the very short version of the story. and so it seems like that isn't happening after all.

So it's gonna be option #2. Move into a new place with the pair of downstairs housemates around whom all of this has revolved.

It's been a strange experience, honestly. I... gave myself decent odds that they'd be on board with me coming with them, when I first asked. It's just practical. Rent is cheaper the more people you split it between, they already know me so they know I'm tolerable to live with (for now), and it saves them the trouble of searching for anyone else.

But they weren't just tolerant of the idea. They were actively ecstatic about it. I wasn't just given permission; I was actively and enthusiastically offered a place, we'd love for you to come along, you're a great housemate hana and we really appreciate you. For a little while, this made me unbelieveably happy. all I wanted was to be wanted.

It threatens to drive me into a spiral of insanity and incomprehension if I think about it for too long.

- - - - -

I have never had a good relationship with the people I lived with.

I consistently got into trouble, into arguments with my dad since I was about 8 years old. I just couldn't wrap my head around what he expected from me, with my budding depression and slowly cracking autistic mask. At 15, I moved in with my grandparents instead, because my father couldn't fucking deal with me anymore, and my mother couldn't deal with him neglecting me because of it.

I had a great relationship with my grandparents to begin with; for a lot of my pre-teenage years I had spent most weekends at their house, hanging out with my grandfather doing garden work, or playing games and sewing with my grandmother.

This arrangement lasted 18 months before the aforementioned mental health, now having blossomed into a complex array of traumas and wrath at the world in general, completely fucked that situation. I couldn't meet expectations. I couldnt stay in school. I talked back. I disappeared overnight when I couldnt stand to be at home. I was lazy, and a disappointment. That relationship has never been the same since. I don't talk to my grandfather anymore.

When the few friends I'd stayed in touch with finished highschool and started uni, I asked my parents if I could move in with them again. They were moving house anyway, so it was a convinent time. I wanted to be closer to the city, because one of my friends was Going Through It, and I had a romanticised ideal that I could support her if only I didn't live 90 minutes away.

(yeah, that friendship imploded within the next 12 months as well. go figure.)

Moving back in with my parents was okay at first. I was 17; I got a job, I stayed out of the way apart from showing up for dinner and occasionally going out with my dad on weekends for various escapades. I was freely allowed much more of the independance that I had previously taken by protest. It went well.

And then I got depressed, and my dad got depressed, and everything went back to how it had been before. So of course my mother got depressed too.

I ended up escaping this again by spending barely any time at home. I went to stay with my aunt and uncle, oestensibly on the excuse of babysitting my younger cousins but mostly just to get the fuck out of my dad's way.

This was nice at first as well. they liked me. but I still didn't quite fit. And somehow, over time, I stopped feeling welcome there. I don't really know what happened, but despite still having a set of their housekeys, I haven't talked to that part of my family for years.

When I was 19, my dad insisted I move out. He didn't care if I had a plan, money, a place to go. I was supposedly $6,000 in debt to him for rent he insisted I should have been paying, despite the fact that I had lost my job due to the aforementioned mental health, and also I'm his fucking kid, but whatever.

A different aunt found out, and insisted that I come move in with her if I didn't have any other options. and I didn't, so I did.

We had a good relationship for about a year. I'd barely ever known this aunt, but I got to know her, or I thought I did.

Turns out she's kinda an ableist middle-aged bigoted white woman, which I should have seen coming. I eventually left in protest as soon as I could find somewhere else cheap enough to live, and she didn't seem at all unhappy to see me leave by that stage - nor did the couple other housemates we'd picked up, who were once my best friends but I now exchanged constant arguments with. I stopped talking to basically all of them, and my aunt I hope to never talk to again.

I lived with a stranger for about 6 months. this was fine, vaguely uncomfortable, we kept trying to be friends and not quite meshing. whatever.

I moved in with my boyfriend at the start of 2023. By June, we had broken up and couldn't fucking stand eachother anymore, constantly in passive-aggressive debate about who was responsible for what and who's fault it all was. I found a new place.

The current place.

...It's not a particularly good string of situations, hey? I seem cursed to destroy relationships with anybody I dare to live with.

So I don't really understand why these couple of friends want me to come with them. I've been quite transparent about this history I have, in a slightly shorter form. I don't do anything. I stay in my room, play videogames, occasionally show up for dinners and leech off their food when they invite me to. We play boardgames occasionally, but I am one of a dozen friends they do that with. I suck at contributing to housework, I idly collect junk and then never do anything with it, I keep committing to doing more and then never quite find a convinient time. I don't understand.

I don't understand why my girlfriend wants me to move in with her either. She's even more aware of all this. She knows so many uncomfortable things about me. I don't know why I was willing to let myself move in with her, knowing what I know.

The other friend, the one who has reservations about me moving in with them, is perhaps the one sane person in this situation.

- - - - -

So I don't know what to do. The only future I can see is one where I keep doing this for the rest of my life. hopping between homes, friend groups, relationships, leaving this wake of emotional detritus behind me, a metaphorical bad taste in everyone's mouth.

No matter where I end up this time, I imagine I'll be moving again in 18 months or so.

I've done it so many times. I'm tired.

I wanna go home.