8-13-96
More added 6-14-97
Territoriality
Dammit, I want a me place. I don't want to come home to find a stranger sitting in my papasan using my phone, cooking foul-smelling noodles in my large pot, not even if she does pay half the rent. I feel on edge with her around, and yet I don't know how to be friends. I'm probably more on edge right now because I just spent eight hours in a joint-achingly, soul-freezingly cold computer lab with no access to my primary electronic space, my UNIX account, and part of the time no access to my secondary electronic space, my home page, because the department's server is down and the second-choice server we're connected to is only on-and-off connected to the outside Net.I was frustrated. I want my own computer so I wouldn't be dependent on computer labs and the people who run them (currently on vacation. At least next week I'll be on vacation and the people who left me here to placate frustrated users can bloody well struggle on their own to get the damned thing up!) It's surprising that I don't have a home computer, downright ridiculous when you know that I T.A. the Intro to the Internet course. But I learned it all from the school labs. But now I want my own computer so bad now, something that I can set up to suit myself, with the colors I like and the programs I like and all that fun stuff. Not that I can imagine coming home from working in the computer lab and even wanting to set eyes on another one of the damned things. Normally I manage to read mail and sometimes even find time for news at work. But I want a me computer just like I want a me physical place to send down roots.
So I'm possessive of things, of space, of atmosphere even. But now my roomie's acquired a rabbit and I can't go to the bathroom in the morning without fighting the smell of its cage sitting in the hall because the noise of it drinking or something disturbs her too much to keep it in her room while sleeping. I think I have enough claim to the atmosphere of our apartment that she should have asked me about getting this pet. We've had other atmosphere conflicts before, like the appropriate temperature for the place (she likes it five to ten degrees warmer in the summer, and colder in the winter, than I do). Non-physical things can be extremely important in one's physical happiness.
But it's weird. I'm flattered if I come in and see her looking at my books in the living room. Sometimes I've been happy when she came home, like when I saw a huge cockroach in the kitchen and freaked (don't ask me why I hate those things so strongly, but I do and I'm too freaked by seeing one to kill it, usually). In that I'm-not-even-going-downstairs-anymore state of jitters, it was very nice to hear her come in, even though we didn't talk to one another or anything. Just that there was someone there who might not be so freaked if she saw it.
The next place will be my own. All my own, as much as a rented apartment can be. No roommate. I'm looking forward to it as much as I looked forward to moving into the current place back in the apartment before this one, that hellish place with substantially less considerate roommates.
But at least the guys who were inconsiderate jerks when it came to keeping things clean were guys I could talk to sometimes. I don't have that with the current one. And in the new place I definitely won't have that. And I traditionally don't have much luck making friends with neighbors, at least not since elementary school.
So will it really be that great to have my own territory? I guess I'll see. It will be the first time EVER since I've always lived with family or roommates. I dunno whether to be happy or apprehensive. And I HATE not knowing.
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