Subletting at twenty eight, and everything else follows from that

My name is on nothing. Not the lease, not the electricity, not the button by the door. I pay a person who pays the person whose flat it actually is, and if that arrangement is ever noticed I have two months and then I do not live here. Everything else in this post sits underneath that fact.

Twenty eight, out west, four years of rope and a partnership of two that ended in the spring for entirely ordinary reasons. What the housing means in practice is that I have never been tied in a room I could call mine. Every evening I have had happened somewhere else, on somebody else's terms, at a time that suited their flatmates.

I have stopped apologising for it, mostly because half the people I meet here are in the same position and the other half have a partner and a lease and no idea how the rest of us live. If you have somewhere, say so early. If you do not, say that early too and we can at least be realistic together.

What I want is a standing partnership, one person, over years rather than months. I can be reliable about time even when I cannot be reliable about place.

Not looking for somebody who will suggest I simply find a better flat, which is advice I have only ever had from people who have not looked for one recently. Not looking for anything that quietly assumes I can host. And not looking to move in with a stranger to solve a rope problem, which I have watched two people do and neither of them enjoyed it.