Rope bottoms · North York, Toronto
I live above my parents and none of this happens in that house
Pinned as parents_live_downstairs
- Wants
- somebody with their own place and no curiosity about mine
- Rope so far
- Three years, one partnership of eighteen months.
- Around
- North York, Toronto
My parents are downstairs. Not nearby, not in the same neighbourhood: downstairs, in the house I grew up in, behind a door at the bottom of the stairs that has never once been locked in either direction. My aunt has the basement apartment. Nobody in that building knows anything about this and nobody is ever going to.
Twenty seven, North York, three years in. I am not unhappy about the arrangement and I am not being kept there. It is a good house, everyone in it is kind, and I would be handing most of what I earn to a landlord downtown if I left. It simply means that every single thing about my life in rope happens somewhere else, on somebody else's floor, at a time I can account for at dinner.
What that requires from a partner is unglamorous. Your place, always. Evenings that end at an hour I can explain. A tolerance for the fact that I will not be replying to anything between six and eight, because that is when my mother tells me about her day and I am not going to be looking at a phone while she does.
I am not looking for anybody who thinks this is a problem to be solved by my moving out, which I will do eventually and not because of rope. And I am not looking to be asked whether they would really mind, because I have thought about that for three years and you have thought about it for a minute.