He is going to leave me.
It was three to six months, and now it's more like six months with the faint threat of a few years, and even if it weren't, he likes to be gone.
Sometimes it feels like he's already left me.
It's not the loneliness, in which I revel. It's a creative outlet, loneliness.
It's the uncertainty.
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I like a good ritual.
The ritual used to be work, oatmeal, salad, wine, Colbert, sex (if I'm not too PMSy), the day bookended by snuggling. My minute-to-minute life was dictated by those around me, what my boss wanted to do, what my boyfriend wanted to do, and my life is better this way, when my choices come down to whether I will put a nectarine in my oatmeal or in my salad.
Left to my own devices, I am scared of what will become of me. I know the kinds of self-destructive choices I am capable of making.
I've been very careful with that ritual since he's left: work, oatmeal, salad, yoga, wine, ice cream, Arrested Development: white noise.
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(He jokes about things like, "Don't ever get as fat as her" as we're on our way to dinner. He doesn't quite realize what words like those will do to someone as self-loathing as I.)
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He said I could come with him, if it's going to be a few years (so long as I don't gain weight, I guess).
I don't like change, I said, which is not true. It takes me a decent chunk of time to adjust to change, to find that new ritual, but I do like it in the sense that I like boring less. I value interesting over happy.
But I don't like depending on someone else for change.
And I don't like being told not to get fat.
It makes me feel like I'm 16 again, being told I'm fat at a 120 pounds (my current weight), and I respond by throwing a big, bratty fit over nothing and fall asleep reassuring myself that I don't have to carve lines into my skin just because I've eaten a croissant for breakfast.