Even though my life can generally be described as nomadic and it is without routines lately, I’ve been making a lot of effort normalise it in the past year, especially seeing I dislike changes. This was helped by moving back to Reading where I still had some great friends, reconnected with past friends and met many new people. I had a good friend and his dog move in with me in October and it worked out pretty well, especially as we’d lived together before.

Somehow that’s changed in the last few months with two close friends moving away from Reading and a lot of people being busy with work and other things since the beginning of the year.

And today can almost be described as the end of an era. My housemate moved out yesterday to be closer to his family in Cornwall and even though we didn’t spend all that much time together due to different work and sleeping patterns we still had our routines of cooking together, doing the shopping or Sunday afternoon James Bond sessions, so being in the flat on my own now feels very strange!

Something that’s become clear last night as I kept finding his things everywhere in the flat, for example the tumble dryer, is that it’s the first time someone has moved out from where I am living. In the past it’s always been me moving out or all of the people I’ve lived with moving somewhere else together. And I’m not sure it’s something I want to get used to!

Things I need to look at in the coming months is relying less on individuals as the chance of someone just moving away is too big and more at the big picture. I’ve likened my move back to Reading to moving back into a network of support from friends I’ve known for a long time, but that’s changed now and I need to change with that. Unlike most people I don’t have the family network behind me and every time someone I know very well moves away there’s a gap that needs filling as strange as that sounds.

This all sounds very bitter and it’s not actually intended to be; more some realisations I’ve had last night. It’s a situation I’ve never encountered before and coming to terms with it seems to be much more difficult than I thought!