Still trying to separate

I have never lived alone. I mentioned this before...I moved out of home into lodgings into student halls into Posh's house into our life together, and then in with Rogers, who has been an utter love to take me in. I write this, aged 29, only days away from living alone for the first time in my life, and it seems to be time to justify my own place in the Hall, to pick apart one of the Heroes with which I have lived my life thus far.

I have always conceived of myself as a sociable being, someone who thrives on company. 2Shoes was always the loner, as we grew up. She played by herself, was happier with her own company, self-contained. Whenever the family moved, we moved schools. It made 2Shoes more withdrawn and incapable of making friends; in me, it exacerbated my natural ability to socialise, and this is partly how the Story of Me developed. I always had friends, and made new ones whenever I started a new school. And I can still pull the same tricks now, fitting in (enough, at least) more or less wherever I go.

But then I go to parties at friends' houses and end up feeling autistic and, frankly, nothing short of socially retarded. People seem to believe I function perfectly, but they are fooled by my tidying: I tidy at parties so as to have something to do, because I can't bear the silence of my own head at those moments, when I have nothing to say and plenty to think.

And as I sit here, on the verge of having only my own room to play in - nobody downstairs watching the telly - I am both excited and terrified. I know I have learned the basic practical skills - washing clothes and dishes, shopping, etc. - and I have learned them well thanks to Posh and her often unfathomable systems. So I know I can manage. And I want so much to find out what it will be like. I want to be ruler of my own space, with no-one else's opinion to care about unless I ask them in to that space. But I am scared of the dark corners in my head whence the monsters come. They pulse and lurk and crawl and are murky, deep creeping cellos and double basses and chromatic twisting and turning trumpets, eating away at the stuff that makes me what I am, devouring all the sense and logic and spark and ideas, until it is indeed a void.

So, it seems that the Story of Me is a bit more complicated. I am sociable, indeed I am, but I find it hard to get very close to people (for fear, I guess, of having to move away again). And it has for a long time seemed true that many of my friends are parts of circles of which I am not quite part. I don't care much for circles it's true, but it's interesting that I have tended to flit from one to the next never quite settling. Now I'm a grown-up, supposedly, I don't suppose this model even means much any more, but I was like that when there were circles - when I was at school - and I understand myself in those terms still. And so I flit, juggling the rings of friendships, because I am scared of dropping one.

It is crucial that I mark my own territory soon: the days of abjection will come, and rain plagues upon me, and I will collapse under the weight of it all, and then I can rebuild and I will be worth being again.