You start getting used to being just you again.  Even if you don’t want to—you do.  It’s not like everything is always a surprise every day like it was at first.  It starts out like “50 First Dates,” with you having to tell yourself the whole story from beginning to end every single morning, but eventually when you wake up, you remember.  And your life slowly starts to resemble what it was a long time ago, before everything.  You liked it, then.  You like it now, sometimes.

You get better at not buying too much food at the grocery store.  You realize that you don’t need the car you don’t have, because a backpack full of food lasts for a week, anyway.  You stop expecting to relax on the weekends, because by the time you run all the errands on your list and do all the things that need to be done, it’s over.  Because you have to do each and every single thing yourself, one at a time.

It’s what happens.  In case you wondered.

Even though you have a good job and spend almost nothing, you are still always running short of money.  Because rent is rent and the bills are the bills.  One person or two don’t change the rent, the electricity, the cost of wi-fi.  But only half as much comes in.  You try not to stress out about it.  Anyway, you have a Jenga towers of tiny containers of leftovers piling up in the freezer.  You make a mental note to that you need more tiny containers.

You’re surprised to discover that even though you want to go out and see people, when you get there and see them, you soon want to leave and go home.  What’s there to talk about anyway?  And people seem possessed by this inexplicable need to talk all the time.  You wonder if there is anyone else on the planet who comprehends the phrase “comfortable silence.”  You realize that if there is, you don’t know them.  You wish you did.  You wish other people had more in common with cats.

You look up at the half moon one evening and suddenly you get it.  It’s the perfect analogy.  The half moon.  That’s what you are.  Half of a thing.  The illuminated half.  The half that reflects light.  The other half is there, but you can’t see it because it can’t reflect light.  Exactly.  But it’s still there.  It’s still the other half.

Then you feel a little bit better.