But I do know the difference, now. In two ways, and I'm not sure which is worse.
First, of course, family. All my life, I've been close to them - geographically, if nothing else. I can count on one hand the number of times I've lived for more than a couple of months anywhere other than my parents' house: my year of madness at Trent, boarding with the Kraan family in Lindsay, living on my own for a miserable half-year. And now, residence at Laurentian.
I used to think I would be terrified of living on my own, having to deal with cooking for myself, cleaning, interacting with the inevitable suitemates or tenants downstairs or some other variety of neighbour other than the distant next door type I grew up with. This past summer, I thought I was looking forward to it: I already did most of the shopping and cooking for my parents by then, and was beginning to feel the looming threat of being trapped in that reverse role, having them depending on me more and more as time went by. Now, though, I'm actually here, and what I'm truly feeling is simple: I miss my family.
My relationship with them - especially with my parents - has transformed a dozen times over the years. When I was very young, I worshipped my father and was more than a little bit afraid of my mother; as I aged, I started to resent the amount of time my father spent away from home, while my mother became the provider of cookies and home-cooked chili on winter evenings; still later, I saw my father's vulnerability and his deep pride in both of his children, and I realized that my mother is probably the closest person in the world to me as far as temperament and sense of humour goes. These days, I mostly just accept the two of them for who they are. They're not perfect people, by any means. My mother's deeply ingrained racial sensibilities would make the grandmother in "A Good Man is Hard to Find" blush with shame, and my father is entirely too willing to yield to her impulses in all things. They weren't perfect parents, either, and I'm not just saying that because they refused to buy me a Sega when I was a kid. But all things considered... I like my parents. They're good company. Being at home with them feels relaxing and comfortable and all the things that living at home should be. Until they move into a new house again, a part of me will always feel most at ease sitting in their living room in front of the fire with a good book in hand and Maggiecat in my lap.
So, that's one difference that I know and miss. It's bearable. Less than that, even: I always knew I would need to leave the nest eventually, and I think that they miss me more than I miss them, on average. I go home on weekends sometimes, I call two or three times per week, it's really not so bad.
There's another difference, though. Newer, and sharper, and if the absence of the comforting presence of my family is the emotional equivalent of the occasional dull ache of an old injury, this one is more like the shock of a sudden trauma.
I had long since given up on falling in love. Couldn't imagine what anyone else in the world could possibly see in me, and I had no intention of setting myself up for hurt by going looking. I wouldn't even have known where to start, anyway. Me, striking up random conversations with strangers? That's about as likely (and as pleasant) as being killed by tetanus after mishandling a rusty paperclip. I did my share of online flirtation because it was safe, and easy, and I thought that the sort of detached intellectual affection found there was as good as I was going to get.
Then came Caspian. And then, after a few months of something that wasn't quite the usual detached exploration, he drove 14 hours to meet me. And then, after a couple of hours of awkwardness, I felt like I had known and loved him all my life. Everything about him was just right.
He spent a week with me at the beginning of August, and then another week before the end of the month, and we stayed in my parents' house and I showed him my hometown and the few other places nearby that are special to me. I missed him terribly when he left, both times, but he had been a visitor. And we always know that visitors need to leave eventually, no matter how pleasant their company.
Then I went to spend a week with him, down in the States. Staying in the house he had to himself, helping him get his new studio set up, going out to dinner with him at the local pizza place. And it didn't feel like a visit; it felt like, well, home, of a different sort. Waking up next to him in the morning felt like the most natural thing in the world. Curling up on his couch with his head in my lap and watching Cowboy Bebop was, for that week, my definition of contented pleasure.
I'm glad I experienced that, of course. It was the best week of my life, and I wouldn't trade its memory for anything.
But December - our next scheduled visit - is a long way off. If I didn't know the difference, living alone would probably be OK... but I do, twice over. And of the two things absent from my life right now, I miss him the most.