The last time I saw my recent ex was on a hot August night when I visited his workplace. Nursing several glasses of wine, I had a long conversation with a woman a few years younger than me who bartends there. She had intentionally taken a significant amount of time away from romantic relationships to focus on herself. In that time she had done a cleanse, yoga, and a lot of reflecting, and is also training to become an alternative healer. Glowing with health and beauty, she concluded her description of her ongoing “single” experience by saying, in a tone of evident satisfaction: “My head is so quiet now.” My response was jealousy, for my head was not quiet. My head was like a 4 AM party that needs to be broken up by police or concerned neighbors. Even as I registered my response to this woman’s words—and her state of secure wellbeing—I could feel the howling wolves and broken glass of my inner hysteria…which, a couple of hours later, prompted me to initiate the end of that romantic relationship.
Now, about a month post- this latest breakup, I realize that I have either been in love with or dating someone since I was 18; almost half my life. What would it be like if the psychic energy I have been channeling toward men were poured back into me and my life? I also realize that to be a 35-year-old unemployed single mother is a horrible cliché. Around me, everyone I know has paired up. They have built or bought enduring structures. They appear able to, in the lingo of my Counseling studies, “form and maintain satisfying relationships,” both intimate and communal. Since about 18, non-sexual relationships have interested me very little: something that becomes clear whenever there is a holiday and I have no plans; that was apparent last month on my birthday when I did not receive a gift. How can I advise other people on how to succeed in relationships—of all kinds—until I can define what such success means to me?
I do not want to be judgmental here about my (or anyone’s) strong drive for love and sex. Trying to scrub these parts of me away or condescend to them would mean harming myself…which is exactly what I want to stop doing. I just want to press pause and see how I arrived at this state of things.
I am reminded of the end of the Jane Kenyon poem “Eating the Cookies,” which is about cleaning out the house after a close relative has died: the speaker pauses in her packing/folding and, for a moment, presses the last cookie from the tin against her forehead, “because / it seemed like the next thing to do.”
2 comments:
God yes. I've been single for over a year now--and though I'd love to claim it's because I am choosing this state (and in fact, it IS what I claim, to others and sometimes to myself) that clamor of my brain, that almost desperate clanging toward my need to be coupled only quiets. Never goes away. Comes back in odd moments when i look around and I'm the only single mother at the bus stop, when my friends from college are posting Facebook pictures of their weddings, their newborns, their snuggly photographs with their loves. I tell my therapist that I'm often ashamed for even wanting a partner: I've got a good kid, a good job, decent friends. I should be happy alone, right? THIS SHOUD BE ENOUGH. But it's not. But when my son is asleep, or at his father's house and the house is empty and I wonder what it's like to curl up next to someone and to trust--to really trust--that he wants as much to curl up next to me, that he wants to call this HOME? well, then I have no clue. I'm glad I've been single for this long if only because I think (although I have had no opportunity to test it) that my tolerance for jerks has lessened. When i turned 32, I told myself I'd give myself a year. And then I turned 33. And the year stretched into almost two and keeps stretching...
Sara, I can so relate. That "This should be enough" voice, and the shame about wanting something more in this part of life--I've heard it from myself many times. I've also spent a lot of time alone while in relationships. I've gone to restaurants alone, bars and movie theaters alone, weekend breakfast alone (while around me there were families and couples); spent nights quietly alone with my pregnancy or my child or my cat, my movie and chocolate and wine...I'm capable of doing it forever and I'm pretty sick of it. So I think it is so natural and appropriate to want that partnership that fits, and I look forward to seeing what happens for you now that you know what you won't tolerate anymore. I am confident that beautiful things are ahead.
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