Apprehensive adaptation and comfort in change

Today my SP and I found out some fantastic news.

Tomorrow evening, her partner comes home.

We are both filled with an apprehensive relief, still not sure, after so many possiblys and probablys and maybes. Neither of us really knows if tomorrow he really will be here and, if he is, how long he will stay: a week; a month; forever.

I have seen my SP deal with the fluctuations of emotion this week that she has experienced with never really knowing whether she could allow herself to imagine the possibilities. She has just left for another appointment and I’ve seen: Inside her somewhere she is slowly, hesitantly beginning to realise and accept. I could see it creeping, cautiously, through her smile and her eyes as she began to see how her life might be changing once again, and he’d be home. And it is really beautiful. She is allowing herself the possibility of being able to express the love that she’s locked tightly away, in just a few hours’ time.

She still hasn’t really allowed herself to believe that she will see him tomorrow night. But she has allowed herself, almost, almost to believe he is coming home.

She has worried intensely about how I will adapt, to living with another person, to living with a couple, to not being exactly what we’d planned.

I would be lying if I wasn’t a little apprehensive about more change and adapting to another person’s routine, their structure, the way they like things to be, especially in their own home (from what I can gather he’s a great deal tidier and more methodical than my SP and I, who are both rather scatty and untamed in the ways of domesticity, although we both give it a damn good go). It is also going to take me a little while to adjust and rebalance a different equilibrium, another entity in the equation. And, from a selfish point of view, I will now have to share her.

I am a creature of habit, my boyfriend is often driven insane by my unfathomable routines, the undecipherable way I like to do things. From his point of view, I appear to have constructed a watertight methodology, an unbreakable code that seemingly only I, and a few close female friends, can interpret.

When I ask him, for example, what time he would like to go out for dinner, he tells me, often plucking a time randomly from the air, not really caring either way as long as he gets fed at some point. Or he did, until he realised that whatever time he mentioned, it wasn’t the time I had in mind. His suggestion would be followed, with shocked reaction, by various reasons why 7 o’clock would be an utterly ridiculous time to go to dinner, but 7:30 (the time I had in mind) would obviously be perfect.

He’d occasionally attempt to second guess me, but it is something that very few have mastered (my SP being one of these, but probably because she herself has such a complex mesh of contributing factors that affect such a decision as to what time dinner should be) and he rarely humours me by trying to understand the complexities of such a decision.

My boyfriend has now totally given up on such ill conceived guessing games. He simply returns the question to me, adding on the end ‘because you’ve already decided, haven’t you’. I retort, insulted, that I haven’t, and, occasionally, I attempt to pre-empt my thought by asking him before I have had time to digest such information and form a complex reasoning for whatever time I have earmarked, but usually, yes, I admit, I’ve already decided. Well, not decided as such, because obviously I want to factor in any opinion and suggestion of his into the equation, but its got to have damn good justification.

Since we moved out of our flat, and maybe even before, during the change, during the uncertainty of if we were going to move to a flat in Dulwich (it is more beautiful than the images of its name evokes, trust me) and settle down into mortgage infused bliss (yes, I know, a blatant oxymoron) and become slaves to the city or if we were going to both follow our dreams, but be apart for a long, long time, since that time, I have noticed a change in myself.

At one point, not too long ago, a change such as this would have greatly unsettled me. But I have developed chameleonic properties (well as much as is possible for an OCD riddled methodologically obsessed WebStress can be) having adapted to numerous routines and lifestyles and homes over the last few months. I have eaten my beans on toast on a variety of plates in many different settings. I have even stopped eating beans on toast every day – how’s about that for a change. And it has made me a better (not to mention slightly less frustrating) person, one poorly designed personal quality gradually subsiding, a bit at a time, and a layer of easygoingness trying desperately, steadily, quietly to form on its surface, like algae, attempting to gradually suffocate my rituals, my routines, my numerous ‘this is how it should really be done’.

I have tried to convey to her the genuineness of my happiness that I am feeling about him coming home. Of course I am bloody happy. She is incomplete without him and they are miserable apart. People in love shouldn’t have to do this, they shouldn’t have to go through this. They should be together, or if they’re not, the reason they are apart should be one that they can somehow find happiness and contentment in, knowing there’s an end, knowing it is for the right reason.

And I think she knows. I am a terrible liar to those that know me well, and she does. I have also heard he is an excellent cook and I am planning to fully exploit any generosity he may wish to exert with regards to tasting sessions and offer my advice (ahem) with any experimentations he may undertake (which usually surmount to ‘I think you might want to put some chilli in that’, being the culinary goddess that I am not).

He is also a wonderful bloke. And he takes the piss out of me (I may point out that loads of people do this as I am an extremely easy target and appear to offer myself for such abuse obviously and stupidly) but with him, I know it is out of affection. Well, at least I think it is.

I have listed my apprehensions first in this post because I wanted to get them out of the way, to highlight their existence but to put them into context, to know how little they really represent, in order to be able to enjoy the time with them both and carry on with the direction I was going, to enjoy the contentment of relaxing into a safe, loving, caring environment, to be with two people I care a great deal about. I am extremely happy in my surroundings and my situation, as best it could be without my boyfriend, and I have the continuous (if occasionally exhausting) affection and love of two beautiful puppies to boot (even if I did manage to drench my socks today by walking through, on two different occasions, dog piss. In the same place. Little buggers).

She will, of course, remain my Surrogate Partner. And now, maybe, I will have two.