I've barely been in my new house for 18 hours & already my world is sliding off of the nice stable platform I built for it out of expectations, & into the realm of the unknown. I forsee intense moments of navigation ahead, if I can stop focusing on the way I want things to be.
I get kind of startled when things don't happen in a way I expect. There's always a moment of panic while I try & adjust my equilibrium, & then the sudden grasp of balance & the sigh of relief. Just like when you make a grab during a hard climb, the second after you commit & before you are sure the hold is there, when you're straining over a million possibilities & empty space. Change & I have never been good friends, the kind you sleep in piles of sleeping bags with, where you wake up & no one is quite sure which foot belongs to who--more like a new acquintance with possibilities but an unpredictable personality, who you watch with fascination but more than a little wariness as you get to know each other.
When I was ten I thought that, as soon as I was twelve, I would know what was up. I'd have a firm grasp on the world & it would all make sense. When I was thirteen, I waited for 18. By 18, I didn't expect anything different, but when 21 rolled around I was surprised at how much had changed. A year later, now, I've finally settled into expecting that nothing I expected is going to turn out quite like I expected it too. Which is kind of twisted. Actually.
I do want a few things, though, with this house & the new challenge of co-existing peacefully with my two younger sibthings. I want to not always come home to the herd of freshman that seem to follow Alex around, even though I don't blame them. I want to work things out with Amanda so that we don't resort to yelling when our versions of housekeeping (not to mention alarm clocks) don't quite coincide. But the biggest thing right now is, I DO NOT want to have the TV on. Pretty much ever. I hate how I can't read in the same room because I can't concentrate, & how my neck keeps turning to look at it when something interesting happens. & how nobody can carry on a conversation with it on. But I have a plan. I'm going to wait a few days, so suspicion isn't turned on me, & then I'm going to haul it out of the cabinet & yank a wire out of the back where they'll never see. That's pretty much what all this chatter was about. I was in the living room and it took about two minutes to realized that this was change I wasn't going to deal with. I grew up without a TV & I hate them. Of course, the other two did as well, & they like it. Go figure. But it has to die.
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