The way that light attaches

Disclaimer to you among the Google-hit masses (you know, all tens of them) who love me and read this stuff: This is where it's working for me to put this right now. And I thank you for everything, as always, especially for making me feel less like a misfit toy than I otherwise would. Now let's just have a drink, shall we?

One night a couple of weeks ago I was standing in the kitchen of an old friend's house in a southern state, looking out the window into darkness, pretty much. She wasn't there. She and her kids were still on a trip and I had come in early to hang out for a few days by the water and it is the benefit of having old friends who trust you that they'll leave the code to their gated community in your e-mail, the key to the house in the fern on the porch and a lasagna in the refrigerator. 

And standing by her sink that night I realized that here I was in the space where someone else lived her life, a beautiful house, a place where I felt really comfortable moving through the rooms. And I soaked up knowing that someone with whom I'd sucked down many beers in parking lots had a house that could be featured in Southern Living, that had more than one hammock and neighbors who waved and a little spit of sand you could sit on by the marsh. 

But it wasn't mine. I could walk around in it, borrow it for a bit, feel as comfortable sleeping and eating there as I really did. 

It just didn't belong to me. And if I was honest, I knew so distinctly at that moment that I didn't really have that place that did. 

And let's not talk about the space I do have. It meets the baseline on Maslow's hierarchy and for that I am grateful but beyond that it's...unsatisfying. 

A few days later I was in one of the warmest homes I've ever visited - both in the way it looked from the curb and from the corners of every room and the way it felt. Again, the doors were opened to me and I found friends inside who if they weren't happy to see me are incredibly good liars. Sunday morning amazing light streamed through so many windows, and there was Elton John on the stereo, kids with serious plans and engaging conversation and an incredible homemade breakfast in the kitchen. 

On my way home to my own life later I started ugly crying about 20 miles outside of Durham after a loud rendition of Last Christmas segued into some bs like Home for the Holidays and I lost my toehold in stability.

It turns out the line about the fool who goes all the way to Pennsylvania from Tennessee for a homemade pumpkin pie can be quite the little bitch of a trigger there, friends.

Anyway, there was something in that last place in particular that I knew I needed and I lacked, something I quite believed I ought not to lack at this juncture, something I tried to believe simultaneously in the car that I would be okay without if it never came my way while knowing that I absolutely would not. I knew that I would die, or might as well, if this is all there is.

It wasn't fair, it wasn't fair, it wasn't fair. 

But it gives you something to aspire to shut up. 

It wasn't fair, it wasn't fair, it wasn't fair. 

You're not dead yet. Shut. Up. 

It gets harder to repeat these things to myself the harder I'm pushing 40.  And it turns out that it's tough for me sometimes to live on the fringes of other peoples' lives, although without other people I'm kind of screwed, and when I'm with the right people I don't feel fringey at all. This is all very difficult to describe.

I kept thinking this all the miles it took me to settle down between there and the huge I-95 discount store, that it wasn't fair, that I wasn't as good at this alone thing as I've appeared to be for a long time and I didn't understand why this had happened to me, that as much as I've traveled and as much as I've run and as much as I've tried to make things better for a very long time, that I really didn't know what to do anymore if I ever did know. That as long as this existential loneliness sticks that I would remain in this weird life I've been living for a very long time now. 

Ten years, to be exact. 

That I would always be unhappy. 

I blamed the universe. I blamed my ex-boyfriend for the ancient things that always come up from the ether when I get like this. I blamed the media. (That's a lie but I really should, I mean they get blamed for everything else anyway.) I thought judging thoughts about just about every human being I know even vaguely who didn't deserve the surely blessed life of domestic bliss that they were living if I couldn't have this too. 

I never said this was right or made good sense. I never said I had any. 

I blamed myself. Most of all I blamed myself. I blame myself, for being broken, for not being the kind of person who can be connected to anyone but friends for the long haul, for not just hitching myself to someone decent even though I knew that wasn't what I wanted from them at all because it just wouldn't be right. I blamed myself for not being willing to pack up the next day and move to a place where I could maybe afford property more easily, because oh, wait, maybe I don't have a job there? And at least I have a job. I blamed myself for not being financially stable enough to have a house, a child that so many people seem to think I can just afford on my own in all the ways a child must be afforded (and I am not talking about money entirely here.) 

I blamed myself. I blame myself. 

And I blame myself for thinking these things, for not being content with what I've got and who I am and what I've accomplished, for not being happy for other people and accepting of what has gone down in my life at the same time. I blame myself for not knowing what to do, ever, although my job is essentially to tell other people what to do. I blame myself for faltering in hope and optimism. I blame myself for being afraid.

In truth I don't know what happened in my life to make this all happen. I don't know how I got here. I don't know what I did or didn't do, what other people did or didn't do, what way the stars aligned to make it pan out this way. I mean, I know. I know. It's just not like I knew in the moment, or even in the months and years when choices were being made, roads chosen and discarded. 

I only knew what I was doing at the time. I only knew to follow my heart and to wish and to hope and to do the daily things we all do to get by. I trusted and believed and then I didn't. And that is how I got here, the short of it anyway.

I came home from this trip more unhinged than when I started and I was really hoping for the opposite outcome. I am completely untethered right now and I'm scared shitless. I am running out of coping skills and rationalizations and ideas and solutions. I am working too hard and not getting anywhere. 

I don't know how this will change or when or what succession of steps I'll take to make it happen, although every day I still do some things that feel like they might be the right things to do. I reach out, although I probably will not answer the phone or call, and I'm sorry but that's just my own weirdness not talking. 

At the same time it's ridiculous, really, how rich I am in friends. Quite specifically, several people have offered their homes to me while I figure stuff out and that has been amazing to me and so appreciated. And as an aside, two of these people are people I met on the INTERNET, and then became friends with in real life, so suck it, Internet haters. 

It's embarrassing, almost, to think about it. It's awesome and nice but it's embarrassing, and that is another issue of mine entirely.

It's like I can't trust myself to be in anyone else's environment. I can't be around another family, another couple, another situation. I need to be in this limbo. I need to be uncomfortable. Because I think that's what motivates me. I think that's what will make the changes happen if they are to happen at all.

I told you I have no idea how I got here. I don't like it either. It is an unpalatable to describe it and it's awkward and disappointing to live it, particularly when I'm supposed to have a tinsel-like glow at the moment.

Sorry. Holiday fail.

So all of this is to say that this current whatever this is is why it's so hard for me to write right now. This is why I'm not living, either, as effectively as I ought to be. And that's maybe because I don't know what I'm doing it for. I honestly don't know. And once again, because I'm thinking there must be some reason why I'm here, I came back from that trip knowing that I have to tear everything down and rebuild it so I can figure it out in the process. 

And I'm trying to figure out how to do some good at the same time, I really am. I am sick of myself, honestly and truly sick.

So every day I have to keep finding a reason to do this, even if it's just a self that I don't have a whole lot confidence in right now. And I really do have to keep trying to write it down, even though quite frankly it's the last thing I want to do. It's still really the only thing that helps.   

Comments

[jodifur]

oh Laurie, I wish i could say anything, do anything, to make it better for you. But know this, married people have these moments too. I promise.

[Sarah, Goon Squad Sarah]

I think it is good you didn't end up with someone that doesn't make you happy.

I think you will find him.

I think he will be worth the wait.

[Jennie]

I thought all of these things -- esp the why didn't I just settle? thoughts -- a month or so before meeting my husband. I think it's good to think these things, to challenge yourself, to acknowledge how you feel. It's the people -- lots of them married and in relationships -- who refuse to feel something real -- that really worry me. Those people are the ones whose lives never begin, no matter who they're sharing a bed with.

[Laurie]

Thanks to all of you. MamaPop commenters represent. :)

I'm really glad I didn't settle, honestly - I so could have but I didn't. And I saw some evidence this week that the guy I could have married is SO much happier than I ever knew him to be and we would have been so miserable. So it all worked out and I am honestly so thrilled for him. The other one. Eh. Him I can leave to his own devices. :)

I want to be clear because it might not have been in all of this babbling that this isn't just about not being in a relationship. I don't believe in being with someone just because and I've been way happier alone than in some of my more unhappy partnered times. Those? I can't even imagine tolerating them anymore. And I know some very unhappy married and partnered people so I have no illusions that it's always better. Of course it would be nice to have a good one, can't lie, but not at just any cost.

Finally, having made someone the center of my universe for a very long time who left me shattered when he left, I am completely averse to that. It is very, very dangerous - at least I learned that it is for me.

It's something inside, something different now, that I'm not connected to and it's frustrating. It's like I knew all of this all along but it just actively hit me. And I know I have to find my own center of gravity in order to be effective and not be a jerk to the people around me and to even do simple things like print my photos without getting distracted by the huger, weightier thigns. I think I'll feel much better when I have my own home again, and when I make some changes in my routine that are necessary. That's really the feeling I'm looking for. I hope it comes to pass in 2010. I'm pretty sure it will. I just need to get off my ass and make it so, and I think I have to write my way through some of that process.

My I am chatty today. Thanks for listening. :)

[Kim]

I'm sort of terrible at expressing things in comments but I wish you luck doing all the hard things it takes to confront and fix and make your life how you want it. I have a lot of things like that to do and I'm doing some of them but I'm avoiding others. Writing about it is the best medicine in my book, too, especially when I don't want to. Discussing it with myself inside my head leads nowhere.

[Lara]

The thought that always seems to help me the most when I have moments like this is that we are all broken. In some way - in some part of us - we are broken only as humans can be. Being untethered, while frightening, can also be beautiful. Look at it this way: you've done a lot of the hard work of emptying out the unnecessary and unhealthy. You've chipped away at the layers and now you are exposing that bottom layer, the "sub-flooring". It isn't always pretty, but it's sturdy and no longer rotting. And you get to build anything you want on top of it. It's an opportunity. The words will come again, and until they do, keep building everyday - even if just a little bit.