A Living-Space Collaborative Agreement

If this stay went as well as it realistically could:

• What would you hope was different when I left?
• What would you hope I had regained?
• What would you hope our friendship had gained or protected?
• What signs would tell you I was moving farther away from that vision?
• How would you tell me if you believed the arrangement was becoming unhealthy, for you, me, or anyone else in the home?

Your vision for how this could go

Concerns you already have, before I’ve even arrived

Any other questions you have, for me

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I genuinely don’t know how long this needs to be, and I’d rather say that honestly than promise a timeline I can’t keep. It may last a month. It may become longer. It may end early if something more equitable and sustainable for both of us comes together. It may be genuinely helpful and still need to end. Neither of us should have to call it a failure in order to change it.

If this goes as well as it realistically could: I had somewhere to land. We told each other more truth than we otherwise might have. My body got some rest. I regained some practical capacity. You remained free to have your own life the entire time. The household stayed workable. The friendship wasn’t consumed by housing. We noticed problems before they became ruptures. Either of us could end the arrangement without rewriting the entire relationship. We found a halfway point through grace.

I’m not looking for this to cure me, save me, turn my work into a business, make me cheerful, keep me indefinitely, or prevent every conflict. I don’t want either of us walking in expecting that this stay will stabilize me enough to return to some prior version of normal functioning, that’s not a promise I can make. I’d rather aim at something real and smaller than promise something large and false.

A gradual return toward practical sustainability

I don’t want the first month to become a performance evaluation. Beginning around week five, I’d like to commit to a small amount of practical work each week that isn’t my creative project:

• employment exploration
• income planning
• benefits or administrative work
• medical coordination
• budgeting
• transportation planning
• housing research
• communicating my professional story
• developing a sustainable work rhythm

That range would grow gradually from there, week over week, until I have a sustainable plan to restore my independence. These are ranges, not quotas, meant to create observable movement without requiring a false rate of recovery. I’ll keep a private record and summarize the pattern during our check-ins. I don’t want you to become my supervisor, clinician, case manager, or monitor. Together, we’d be observing whether the arrangement is helping me regain capacity, remaining neutral, or contributing to further deterioration.

What success could mean

Success does not require:

• curing me
• saving me
• turning the work into a business
• making me cheerful
• keeping me indefinitely
• preventing every conflict
• returning me to some prior version of normal functioning

Success could mean:

• I had somewhere to land
• we told each other more truth than we otherwise might have
• my body got some rest
• I regained some practical capacity
• you remained free to have your own life
• the household remained workable
• the friendship was not consumed by housing
• we noticed problems before they became ruptures
• either of us could end the arrangement without rewriting the entire relationship
• we found a halfway point through grace

Length of stay

Before I arrive, we should agree on an initial length of stay:

• a thirty-day landing period
• a sixty-day initial stay
• a ninety-day trial
• month-to-month continuation, renewed explicitly rather than assumed

My estimated move-in window is early August. If that shifts, I’ll let you know as soon as I know. And if the invitation is no longer available by then, I’d rather we reassess honestly than have either of us feel locked into something that’s stopped being real.

If the room is needed for guests

If family or friends are visiting and the room I’m in might need to be vacated at some point, even temporarily, I’d appreciate as much notice as possible so I can make other arrangements.

Notice

Under ordinary circumstances, I intend to give as much notice as I reasonably can before leaving. Ordinary notice could mean two weeks, thirty days, or another period that works for the household.

Money and contribution

I’m coming into this in real financial strain, not a rough patch I’m underselling. Housing, transportation, and health have all been hit at once, and rebuilding that is going to take longer than one good month. I’m naming that plainly so it isn’t a mystery we’re both avoiding.

I need clarity about what contribution you expect from me. We should discuss:

• groceries
• utilities
• household supplies
• shared meals
• any rent or contribution expectation
• how expenses will be tracked
• what happens if the arrangement continues longer than expected

I am willing to buy my own groceries and to contribute an agreed amount toward shared expenses when I can afford it. We should choose that amount together rather than allowing guilt or guesswork to decide. If my financial future becomes more abundant, I want your generosity to remain part of what I pay forward. That is not delayed rent. It is not a debt you must collect. It is my desire for your care to remain alive in what I do with any future abundance.

Other ways I can contribute

Money isn’t the only form this can take. If it’s useful to you, I’d like to offer:

• gardening
• organizing shared or cluttered spaces
• light consulting on community design, if that’s ever relevant to anything you’re building
• painting or other art, if that’s something you’d actually want in your home

These are offers, not obligations on either side. I’d rather do something real and useful than perform gratitude.

Standing times

We should pick a day and time for a regular weekly check-in, and a separate day for a broader once-a-month conversation, now, before I arrive.

Shared spaces, cleanliness, and entry

The classic roommate stuff still applies, and I want to say so plainly rather than assume it’s understood: shared spaces get cleaned up after I use them, common areas stay common, and the home gets treated with real respect, not just tolerated.

What I’m asking for in return is that the room I’m staying in gets respected as mine while I’m there. If you need to enter it, I’d like notice rather than immediate, unannounced entry, except in an actual emergency. Twenty-four hours is genuinely appreciated, it gives my nervous system room to prepare for being observed or evaluated, instead of being caught by surprise in a space I’ve been treating as private.

The first month is for landing

For the first month, I am asking for permission to land rather than perform recovery. Landing may include:

• sleeping at unusual hours
• spending long periods quietly in my room
• writing, creating, designing, or working intensely
• eating privately or irregularly
• listening to music or occasionally gaming
• having uneven energy or emotional availability
• being warm and engaged at some times, more internally focused at others
• needing more solitude than may appear ordinary
• processing recent experiences without being ready to explain them

My quietness is not a message about you or the household. I am not asking anyone to understand that immediately. I am asking that quietness not automatically be interpreted as rejection, secrecy, anger, laziness, or deterioration.

Confidentiality inside the home

Some of what I need to work through requires a spoken conversation, sometimes talking aloud with AI, while I’m writing, designing, testing language, processing grief, or sorting through parts of myself that aren’t ready to become household information. I need those conversations treated as confidential. Please don’t listen at the door, interpret fragments without context, question me immediately about something overheard, or treat my working conversations as evidence that action needs to be taken. If the home can’t provide sufficient privacy, I may need to take walks or drives when I work verbally, and we can discuss what’s realistic.

Discretion about my being here

My being in your home is not permission for anyone in the household to share that I’m staying there, or how I’m doing, with anyone outside it. I need to stay separate from certain communities I’m otherwise connected to, for now, including the VR community. I hope that’s an okay boundary to set. It isn’t secrecy for its own sake, it’s about who gets to know where I am and how I’m doing while I’m this exposed, and that should be my call to make, not something that happens by default because it came up in conversation.

Family and previous networks

At least initially, I don’t want to discuss my family or most of my previous personal and professional networks. I have significant grieving and recovery to move through before I can look directly at those relationships again. Please don’t try to locate or contact my family without my explicit consent, and please don’t treat family reconciliation as the assumed direction of healing. If I say I don’t want to go there, I need that to be enough without an argument about why. This boundary may change. It is not a declaration about forever.

Health and stability

I’m able-bodied passing, and I want to name what that actually means: I manage multiple chronic illnesses, each one relatively low-impairment on its own, but cumulatively they leave me pretty sedentary and chronically exhausted. That can be off-putting to people who run higher-energy and who measure someone’s mental wellness by how active they are. My stillness isn’t a mood or a lack of effort, it’s the actual shape of managing a body that’s already working hard just to function.

I take medication that supports me. I manage it deliberately, with my own doctors, in a way that can look unusual from the outside. The reason is practical: it’s set up so a delay in getting a refill doesn’t abruptly destabilize me. That routine isn’t improvised, and it isn’t something that should change because someone else finds it uncomfortable. I’m glad to talk about it if it’s actually affecting the household, but I don’t want suspicion to grow in silence. If you have a concern, please ask me directly and specifically.

Being direct about hard things

I need to be direct so fear doesn’t invent a more dramatic story than what’s true. I am not asking you to monitor me or become responsible for keeping me alive. I am not describing an immediate threat while entering or leaving this arrangement. I do live with longstanding thoughts about death and uncertainty about my future, and I also have substantial clinical and crisis experience of my own, so I don’t need basic crisis concepts explained to me. I say that as someone who is trauma-informed both professionally and personally, most of what’s written here comes out of that, not just out of what’s happened to me. If you become genuinely frightened, I want you to speak with me directly rather than quietly creating a story about me with other people. You are welcome to name your limits. I am allowed to correct interpretations that don’t fit my reality. This isn’t asking you to endorse my beliefs about death, it’s asking us not to replace contact with surveillance.

Safety and notice

Because of recent housing trauma, I need to preserve my right to leave immediately if I become afraid for my physical safety, privacy, or ability to say no inside the home. I don’t expect that to happen here. Naming this is not an accusation against you, it’s part of rebuilding trust in my own perception after remaining in a situation where my boundaries were repeatedly overridden. If I need to leave quickly, I’ll communicate as soon and as clearly as I can, and handle belongings, keys, and expenses when it’s reasonably safe to. Ordinary difficulties move through our check-ins. A genuine safety concern may require faster action. Leaving quickly for safety wouldn’t mean the generosity of the stay was false, it would mean I recognized a limit and responded differently than I have in the past.

Templates for these meetings, along with the ability to schedule them collaboratively, will live on my profile page and in the learning library.

Weekly check-ins

This doesn’t mean we can only speak honestly once a week, it means there’s a dependable place where concerns don’t have to accumulate in silence:

• How is the arrangement affecting each of us?
• Has anything begun to feel confusing, burdensome, intrusive, or unsustainable?
• Are we filling gaps with stories rather than asking each other?
• Is something still manageable now that could become a larger conflict later?
• Do either of us need more closeness, more distance, or a different rhythm?
• Are there practical expenses or household concerns that need attention?
• Has the difference between friendship and housing become unclear?
• What is working that we want to preserve?

Monthly check-ins

A broader discussion, once a month, of:

• finances, groceries, utilities, household impact
• the likely length of the stay
• whether the arrangement remains voluntary
• whether anyone is becoming depleted
• what needs to change

Continuing should require a clear yes from both of us. Silence should not be treated as automatic renewal. I also wonder whether the household would benefit from a brief monthly house meeting involving everyone living there, that’s an invitation, not a condition.

Every three months, if the stay continues

A larger review of the overall direction:

• What capacity have I regained?
• What practical steps have I taken toward income, medical stability, or sustainability?
• What am I contributing to the home, financially or otherwise?
• Is the balance of giving and receiving still workable?
• Is the friendship remaining intact outside the housing arrangement?
• Has my use of the space changed?
• Is the home helping me regain footing?
• Are we maintaining something that no longer has meaningful movement?
• What does each of us now imagine as the most realistic next chapter?

This is not a performance evaluation, it’s a chance to look at the whole ecology rather than reacting to one difficult week. At any review, we might agree to continue as is, continue with changed expectations, set a specific end date, pause the decision, or end the stay while preserving whatever remains true in the friendship. Staying longer is not automatically success. Leaving earlier is not automatically failure.

A reset phrase

We should choose a sentence either of us can use when something is starting to go sideways. For example:

I feel stories forming in the gaps. Can we pause and check what is actually happening?

Or:

I want to return to the agreement before this becomes a larger rupture.

Using this phrase wouldn’t mean either person is guilty, it would mean we’re trying to interrupt assumption before it hardens.

Feedback from the household

You may be a central figure in the home, but I don’t want you forced into being the emotional intermediary for everyone. I want to know if my behavior is stressing you or anyone else in the household. Direct communication is preferred when it’s possible. If someone can’t initially speak with me directly, they may speak with you, but we should avoid forming a permanent triangle where concerns travel around the house without ever reaching me. Feedback should describe observable behavior and impact, not assign a personality, diagnosis, or motive.

Friendship and housing are related but distinct

I value you as a friend, and I don’t want housing stress to consume that friendship. There may be times we need to speak as housemates rather than intimate friends, and other times we need to put practical concerns aside entirely. When possible, I’d like us to protect at least one hour each week for something lovely that is not:

• evaluating me
• planning my future
• discussing my work
• handling household problems
• measuring progress

That hour might involve food, a walk, a show, a drive, making something, sitting outside, or shared quiet. It doesn’t need to be profound. It needs to remain human.

Anger, grief, and the urge to fix

I would like to understand how you respond to grief and anger. Not a test, just a way for us to understand how each person moves, so we aren’t relying only on projection or hope:

• What helps you remain connected when someone is grieving?
• What happens in you when someone is angry?
• How do you distinguish something requiring repair from something that needs time to remain broken?
• How do you recognize when helping has become pressure?
• What helps you resist turning someone into a project?
• How would you want me to respond when you are grieving, angry, frightened, or unable to explain yourself?

My creative work

I’ve been searching for stability while working on a cumulative creative and technical project. I recognize that this work has also functioned as a coping mechanism: it gives despair somewhere to move, and it provides purpose, structure, concentration, and a way to keep making meaning under unstable conditions. That doesn’t make the work unreal.

If you look at the website, what you’ll see is an early draft, a small visible piece of a much wider vision. A lot of it is already built but not yet public. I’m mentioning that so you don’t mistake what’s live right now for the whole thing.

I’m frightened to show it to people. I’m also approaching a place where I may be ready. If I show it to you, I need neither immediate celebration nor immediate critique, I need you to receive it first.

Please don’t make it extraordinary before you’ve had time to absorb it. Please don’t reduce it, diagnose my relationship with it, or decide immediately that it proves either brilliance or something worse. I’d rather you remain quiet with it than react intensely and then lose contact with it later.

The first question isn’t simply “is this good?” It’s closer to: what is this becoming, and what happens in me while I encounter it? You don’t need to share my focus or become part of the project. Your care for me doesn’t need to become belief in my work.

Whatever this brought up that isn’t already asked above, that’s what belongs here.

Your own comments, questions, or things you’d add

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Not a legal signature, just a record of when we actually agreed to this and that we both did.