Moving into a new place is akin to starting a new exercise book in school. Like the promise to write neatly and to make your margins in red pen, I promise to eat well, nourish my body, and keep my bedroom floor free of dirty underwear.

In order to hold myself accountable, I make arbitrary rules. The one that has been most successful has been the you-can’t-buy-snacks-unless-you-bake-them rule. Last week, after I had hauled the final boxes from my ute tray into the shack, I set about making chocolate spiders. I put Nancy Sinatra on my record player and melted the chocolate and spooned the peanut butter out of the plastic jar. I mixed it together with crunchy noodles and spooned them into my cloud-patterned patty pans. In less than 24 hours they were gone. I shared them with Sal, and with the two little girls that live in the main house with their parents. The Little Women.

My nervous system is happy to be living alone. Sharing an apartment with a man was tough on my body. A lot of my triggers involve men in houses, and despite the intellectual acknowledgement that D was safe and kind of full of love, my body remained in fight/flight.

While I fend off grief and resentment – of a life that appears so easy to others but so challenging for me - I make ritual out of stacking my books on the floor and hanging my art, in a peace and quiet that feels like a gift. I make this place a home without compromise. I make it sacred. I hope that one day I can find it within myself to feel safe to share it again too.

I abandoned the south coast quite quickly at the tail end of the first lockdown. I felt confined. After spending months curled around the television for the umpteenth time with a bottle of red, counting the Covid cases with my housemates, I needed a change. I loved my friends, but I felt like I could sacrifice the consistency of their friendship for the next adventure. I was always running, always avoiding, never acknowledging how my departure, my laissez faire attitude to friendship, could hurt another person.

It has been quite the journey to arrive here, as most of you who read this ad hoc Stack will know. My emotional capacity has changed shape, and in many ways, I’m falling in love for the first time. Soul-crushing-I-don’t-want-to-lose-you friend love. I am slowly and tenderly picking up the pieces that I cast aside in years of flight. Fumbling still. Always.

On my first night, I rode to the beach with Sal and we shared a bottle of wine at sundown. The next morning I rode 15kms to town, and ran into Maz and Rose after their run. That night The Little Women clambered up my legs and handed me cards they had drawn in coloured markers to welcome me home. Each time I felt the swell of emotion, at the comfort of having people I know around me. Each time I thought: I don’t want to sacrifice this so easily again. This, is a gift.

It’s time to stay.