As much as I still haven’t gotten used to my sister and brother-in-law moving to their own apartment at the start of the year — the quietness makes every little sound in this house seem that much louder — I can’t help but enjoy having my own bathroom now. Even though our office is up on the second floor along with my bedroom, my parents prefer to use the bathroom off of their bedroom on the first floor (in what used to be my old bedroom back before the fire). The only other time I’ve had a bathroom all to myself was back at the hotel while we waited for the house to be rebuilt, and since that was an unpleasant living situation all around I don’t really count that. It’s nice to know that I’ll never have to wait to use the bathroom again while I’m here, although for some reason when my sister and brother-in-law visit they still insist on using my bathroom for themselves.

This kind of ties in to some thoughts I’ve been having about just how much space I need to live in comfortably. As I’ve said before, I’m probably going to have to get an extra bedroom in whatever place I end up living after I move out just to house all of my stuff, and as if I needed a reminder of that, I’ve just run out of bookshelf space again and need to go buy a new bookshelf later this week. Even though I’m still a bit away from being able to afford my own place, I’ve started looking through apartment listings and such, and it seems like I can’t find a place that has the right amount of space for me. There’s no way I could live in a studio apartment just because I have so much stuff, but all of the one-bedroom apartments I’ve seen so far have been kind of on the big side for my needs. Similarly, I’ve been looking at condominium listings (I’d still prefer to own my own place just because my father has been so insistent on that throughout my life), and there too I can only find places that are far too big for what I feel I could live comfortably in.

As much as I hate to say it, this whole thing is kind of making me think about the senselessness of living alone. As much as I value my privacy, I don’t think that living by myself would be healthy for me. I think that if I didn’t have someone to come home to every night — note that I’m not saying a partner here, merely someone whether a friend or roommate or what have you — my mental and emotional health wouldn’t be quite so good. I know I’ve said before that I planned on remaining single for life, but to be honest I’ve had thoughts to the contrary in recent months, thoughts that started before I started mulling over this whole thing about moving out and living on my own. Now this seems to be driving me even more to start asking around and seeing if any of the people I’ve been thinking about here might possibly reciprocate my feelings towards them. (The answers will be no, I know, but I can dream, can’t I?)