Single Sucks!

Warning: image-shattering confession ahead....

As I'm in the process of moving, and dragging out all of the stuff I've been hiding in the shadowed cubbyholes of my apartment, I am being confronted with some truths about myself that, because I was so shattered for so long, because I spent a lot of time dealing with the failure of my divorce, I simply could not face....

I hate being single. I really liked being married. I don't care about being hip and cool--if there's anything about me that *is* hip and cool, it comes from somewhere inside, and I find it bloody well tiring to have to always think about what's hip and cool. Yeah, I can absorb It and process It and convey It back to folks in meaningful chunks that they can understand, and maybe that's some kind of talent, but it doesn't make me a better person.

I miss cooking and homemaking. I never cared for cleaning, that's for sure, but that isn't what makes someone a homemaker anyway, IMHO. It's more the desire to create a home, not about being up-to-date on the latest dust removal technologies and getting excited at the site of a Dyson vacuum cleaner.

I really *love* traveling to conferences, and meeting all sorts of really cool and famous people. But I also love coming home to a smiling face that misses me--not to a pet or a place furnished in the most up-to-date and expensive stuff. Pets die early and stuff loses its panache in a very short period of time. Conspicuous consumption demonstrated in lavish furnishings is, to me, a waste of money--even if you have it.

Image isn't everything--esp. if nobody cares about who you are and where you're going.

Image isn't everything when you come home to nothing.

I've spent a number of years developing a rather hard exterior, and learning a bunch of esoteric knowledge. But a lot of that esoteric knowledge only makes me something of a unicorn--a singular, mythical type of woman who, quite honestly, only exists in men's fantasies. There is nothing more lonely than being the projection of someone's fantasies, consigned to a special little box in someone's head. It denies one's humanity and one's flesh-and-blood existence.

And all that esoteric knowledge? Really, its most important and special place is not in commerce, but in the crucible of a very intimate and special relationship with another.

It is the glue that holds two adults together because the secrets it unearths are things that we--deep down--don't want everyone to know about us.

Last night over dinner, Steady Eddie looked at me with sad eyes, patted my hand, and said, "maybe you need someone who's younger, who can give you children..."

"I don't know," I said, "I think I'm too old for children now."

"Maybe I've been a hindrance more than a help..."

"Oh, well--six of one, half a dozen of the other...It's not an either/or thing anyway..."

I was going through things I'd bought years ago, looking at all the little decorations, and said "I bought these years ago, when I worked in Princeton. I didn't know at the time that I was nesting. These are the things a woman buys when she's thinking of the children she will share them with..." I folded those things up and put them in my big black trunk full of all sorts of cute and pretty things that I could use to decorate my apartment for the seasons.

They're not the things that someone who's living a single life would have. They're little things that a child would love to see during special times of year. They're the things that a grown-up kid would later come back and say "hey, mom, you still have those little porcelain Easter bunnies? Can I have them?"

Otherwise, they're just junk made from cheap resin. Yard sale fodder.

I feel like opening all these cubbyholes and dragging out all this stuff is opening up big old boils that have just been sitting there for years. I got used to them being there, and just ignored them. I'm good at dealing with pain of all sorts--physical and emotional. I just "work" through, over and around it. But all that stuff is in the sunlight now, and I've got to deal with it. I've got work to do--lots of it. I've got a presentation I'm preparing for, and pulling volunteers together for a film festival, and moving, of course. I throw a mental band-aid over all the feelings, and later in the day, take it off and let whatever it is "air out."

yeah, I cry a lot. But it's okay. I didn't cry for years, so it's just a lot of build-up. "just a flesh wound," the black knight said when his arm got lopped off...

I've got an eBay expert coming over to help me set up "shop" on the site and get rid of the stuff that couldn't be donated. I want it all out and away from me. All that stuff represents dead dreams, and I want some clean air around me so I can figure out where I'm going and what's next. I can't think about that the future with all the dead past hanging around.

I was over in the new apartment yesterday, waiting for the gas man and the refridgerator delivery guys. I set my laptop up in the kitchen, on top of the stove and did some work. Nothing like straight walls and sunlight to make one feel better. I think a lot about how I'll make this place my own. Who knows how long I'll stay there, and who knows what will happen. But, for the most part, it feels like the place to start a new life...