The One with the Family or: Pizza and Avocado

by Moriarty.

After two years of living by myself, I recently moved back in with some family members while studying abroad. And it’s been…an adjustment.

The biggest difference is not dividing up chores, house rules or even learning to put my stuff away (as opposed to having a big pile of stuff near my front door, that consists of everything that I just drop the minute I enter my apartment and somehow never really manage to put away fully.) But it’s more a subtle awareness that someone is always there. You overuse your headphones because no one wants to hear your “motivational” bad Monday morning music. You need to remember to take clothes with you into the bathroom to shower.

Living alone, there was that moment of relaxation once I shut the front door behind me: I could drop everything in my arms on the pile on the floor, plop, (shit, was there a bottle of beer in there?) and take off every uncomfortable piece of clothing like there was a price for whoever could take off the pinching bra and slightly too-tight pants the fastest (… and on top of the pile it goes). Then I could dance through the kitchen in my underwear, trying to simultaneously uncork a bottle of wine and unwrap the frozen pizza, for no one around to see (except the judgy old woman across the courtyard), and sing my trademarked pizza-and-wine song on top of my lungs, for no one to hear (except the granny next door who I really hope is as deaf as I think she is).

Now, even when I’m home alone it still feels weird to sing about pizza in someone else’s house. Mainly that’s due to the fact that there is no pizza. I was originally excited to live with real grown-ups again, just to have a fully stocked fridge. Living by yourself, if you don’t want to put on pants and – horror of horrors ­– go outside, you only have to eat what you have bought before (a logic that somehow still doesn’t resonate with currently-in-the-supermarket-you that refuses to buy anything you don’t need at that exact moment.) You curse yourself each time you stare in your empty fridge at 2 am, trying to convince yourself that a dodgy piece of cheese with mustard is satisfying drunk food.

But the thing I didn’t realize is that grown-up food needs to be cooked. So living with family again, you can open an overstuffed fridge (gluten-free, lactose-free, fat-free) and have less options than with yours at home, where there’s just a single, sad avocado staring back at you (that you just bought for good measure because you felt weird only getting whiskey, beer and chips at the supermarket.)

Maybe it’s just me? Maybe if I relax like I’m at home it will feel less weird? I take my shirt off in the kitchen. “Got my pizza, got my wine, everything’s about to be fine!” Blank stares from the cat. “Avocaaaadooooo, you so fancy, you so green, glistenin’ with your oily sheen.” Still nothing.

Great, now I’m topless, singing to a cat about avocados, silently wishing for the judgy old woman back.

Next Page: The One with the Boyfriend or Onesies and Diarrhea