Odd Man Out

It’s been a while since I’ve been up to writing, not because of anything in particular, but because of the pure monotony. I’ve been in a funk, realizing that every day is like the last and everything I do is a “have to”. I’m feeling on the verge of one of my roller coaster moods and I’m not sure if it’s the boredom that anyone would feel in doing the day to day drudgery or if I’m on the upward swing of my illness. Whatever the case, alone is alone.

No, this one isn’t about romance, but a wider spectrum of relationships that encompasses everyone I know. Charlotte Bronte once wrote “the problem isn’t that I’m single and likely to remain single, it’s that I’m lonely and likely to remain lonely.” There is a big difference. Being the odd one out sucked in school and it’s no less painful now. Why am I feeling this abrupt need for company now? As usual, it’s in the face of seeing others’ camaraderie.

There have been changes in the immediate circle of people that I interact with. All of that is positive for the most part, but when everyone goes on to have a good old time and forgets you exist, well, that’s a little less awesome. It’s a hazard of the fact that I’m alone in my office all day, which I think is the root of my problem. I only get to interact with people that are grieving, have a problem, or are in need of information. There’s no one to talk to for the rest of the day, and recently, it’s taken every ounce of strength to get through it.

I look forward to going home, but it’s more of the same, the weekends, the same yet. A pile of chores and tasks. No company except my boy who has more pressing things to do, like play his video game. It’s becoming a lonely existence and I’m jot sure why it’s not bothered me before. Probably because I get a little resentful of the fact and then want everyone to leave me alone. It’s an unfortunate dichotomy of the illness that we create the very thing we fear.

I don’t want to be alone and want to be included in the love fest, but because I’m forgotten, I’m resentful and seek the very isolation I’m upset about. Attention feels like pity. I think my upswing this time is an angry one. When I go hypo-manic, it’s not joy or excitement that’s awakened, it’s angst, impatience, and resentment. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that company? Right.

I need my spring of inspiration refilled. It’s run dry. I’ll go do some randomness I’ll regret and come back to my senses, nothing having changed really in the end. I, of course, realize none of this thinking is healthy. If I want true change, I’ll have to learn how to interact with people in a less raw way. It’s still difficult not to take everything personally or as a commentary on my fitness as a worthwhile human being. It simply feels like people continually overlook me as a companion…that everyone else is preferable to me… and that’s a painful thing to feel.

It’s all part of it, I know, but it doesn’t make it better. Knowing where it stems from isn’t helping much either. I can catch it, realize it and redirect myself and hope that my company is enough for me, write a little, and wait for it to pass. Woo. Can I party or what? I think this is how people end up drinking by their lonesome and end up alcoholics. In my case, my imagination can furnish me friends and I can pretend that I’m loved. Yeah, I need some rum…

Be Ok

Valentine’s Day. For years the very words evoked an eruption of vitriol from me that would rival that of a Vesuvius style explosion. A venomous tirade would usually take written form at some point during the day.

I’ve always hated it. Always.

My usual M.O. is to dress all in black (not unusual anyway, but I made a point of it on this day to counter-act all the pink), smoke my now outlawed clove cigarettes (which were also black), and mutter angrily. I have an array of snarky anti-valentine buttons. It’s an event.  Bitter much? You think?

This year I’ve been feeling ok. I’ve been somewhat enjoying being with myself and accepting that as a thing. That whole idea that I have to be fine by myself first has sunk in and as things have been passing by without any kind of reaction from me, I’ve been thinking perhaps this year would pass without incident. I’ve seen the displays of pink bears and heart-shaped boxes, seen people perusing the flowers, heard the commercials on the radio, displays of television jewelry, and sort of just went “Meh”. Better yet, a few times I’ve sort of thought to myself, “Well, that’s nice”. (What the ?!?!) 

All of that is a good sign…as in, I’m over it. It’s good to be over anger. It’s good to be over bitter. It’s not an attractive quality. The problem is, I’m fooling myself. Well, a little bit…

As the day draws ever nearer, I find myself accepting of my situation, yes. I’m fine being with me. I’m accepting of myself like never before (minus the donuts I ate this morning-what was I thinking?). I’ve even made plans to spend the evening with the only man in my life who I know loves me to pieces, my son. I figured we’d go out somewhere, maybe get ice cream, have some fun. It’s almost his birthday after all and there’s no one I’d rather spend a fun evening with.

Today though, I realized that I’m missing someone. A lot. Realizing that he’s not missing me is probably the worst part of that equation. Oh, I’ll get a damned Valentine card from him because I’m on his card list, but it’ll have nothing to do with me. I know that nothing will come of us and that’s probably for the best, but I miss the small stuff. I miss talking to him. I miss our afternoons chatting about randomness, all the stuff we have in common, ghosts, trips, plans, writing,  joking about stupid stuff, his bad jokes, calling him the weird names that I make up… just all the small things. Talking. I miss talking.

It came to me yesterday that he was the picture window to my fly. I could see no other way but him. There may yet be an open door off to the side, I just can’t see it, because I’m a dumb fly and the window is so bright. I can see outside. It’s got to be the way hasn’t it? You know how it is when something seems like it’s the exact thing you’re looking for and you just keep hitting your head against it over and over again?

Even though I’m over the romance part of it all, the friendship part is a big hole that I’m having a hard time with. Like I said, I miss the talking. Friend-zoned usually indicates a friendship…right? An occasional discussion? A conversation? A how do you do?…but I digress…

Now I’m back to sitting in my office alone with myself like I used to. I have no one calling me anymore, nothing much to look forward to. I know that could change at any moment. Maybe, and Universe forbid, this stupid holiday is making me sentimental and mushy. I figure it’s probably alright to miss people now and again, especially when they were a big part of your life for a while. I suppose that this is all part of the growth part of learning to be alone and blah blah blah and yadda yadda.  I’m just miserable and I didn’t want another miserable Valentine’s Day.

Of course, I’m not really miserable being alone. I’m not angry. I’m not bitter. What’s the problem? I don’t know. I may feel a bit lonely right now, but I have me, I have the boy, and I’ll have half price chocolate the day after. (Yay!) I may even buy myself some discounted flowers. That’s the spirit! Nothing says patheti-sad-single-near-forty like discount post-Valentine’s Day chocolate and flowers except maybe a cart full of Fancy Feast, litter, and Mama Celeste Pizza for One. Still, I’d rather do those things for myself than have someone else getting them last-minute for me from the corner Walgreens the night before. At least I have forethought involved and a thrifty spending plan.

My favorite new lyrics that I keep repeating today, and I woke up singing are no accident I think… “I thought I knew the answer was you, but now I know it’s always me.”  That’s how I know next year will be better than this year and why this year is easier than last year. It’s self-love day. I’m going to get the hang of this.

Day 6: Insert Morrissey Song…

Question 6: How’s your love life? My first thought was to start off with a fit of mad laughter a la Jack Nicholson’s Joker. That mad laugh/cry he erupted into upon first seeing his face after being dropped in the vat of chemicals by Batman was pretty much my reaction to the question. I mean, come on! My love life? A question about that now?!

I suppose the reason it stings is because my hopes and dreams with DG have just gone up in flames faster than Atlanta in Gone with the Wind. They were nice dreams. They encompassed more than my romantic hopes but my career and travel goals as well. Now I have that pierced through the heart feeling and nothing will fill that emptiness. I guess that’s the empty feeling so talked about in borderline circles.  Just last night I became the tired cliché, eating a pint of ice cream in sweats and watching things that made me cry. I had no desire to do or even plan anything that before would have lit up my entire mood.

You know what brought that on? He signed off quickly for the millionth time, but when he abruptly left, he signed off with “All the Best” where he used to say “Love” or “Yours” or “Always”. I know it’s normal and friendly like it should be now that things have been returned to a status of “friendship”, but it gutted me, obviously. A tiny thing flips a switch and I feel it like a tidal wave. It brought to light something else. Simply by the way I am, I push people away. I have for a long time and I began to see the pattern and how it fit with the definitions of Borderline.

I spent some time talking to a trusted friend and I can say that I’m coming to realize just how hard it is with me reading every little shift of interest as the end of all hope and the impending departure of my friend/partner/whatever. It’s a little hard to take. I mean, how can I ever expect anyone to deal with me? It makes the future of a love life look bleak indeed. In that light, seeing that all of my desperate attempts to have someone care for me as much as I care for them is futile. All of my anxiety and pain seems like cheap melodrama to those around me because they can’t feel it or even imagine it…I just look like a drama queen having fits, but that’s not really the case. Feelings sweep me up and overwhelm. Everything is a reaction to them. No premeditated dramatic soliloquy possible. Just a trigger and an opposite reaction, though in this case, not equal…

Once my friend knew that this is what I was feeling and not me in some way trying to comment on his lack of friendship, and that some decisions I needed to make at the time I simply couldn’t because of those triggers, it made our friendship so much smoother. It reminded me of something I watched last night that hit me like a ton of bricks and explained the situation perfectly and succinctly. Kevin Bacon’s character in “The Following” has a habit of pushing people away out of fear and being unable to let people in, not unlike a borderline (you’re either all in or all out). His partner was giving advice to someone who cared for him. He said, “He’ll push, just don’t budge.”

Just don’t budge.

That’s what it’s going to take. I don’t know all that many people with that kind of patience or the understanding to know that it’s all unconscious on my part. The anger, the depression, all of it. I’ve been truly lucky a few times in that I’ve found two best friends, one of them oddly my ex husband, who won’t budge. If I get truly lucky, maybe there’s a guy out there who’s willing to stand his ground as well. Until then, I’ll be here eating my ice cream.

Days 4 and 5: Apocalypse Now

The friend I described losing yesterday once described me to someone as hating life. That’s not entirely accurate. I love life. I do, though I may not beam it every second. I love a million things about life, like a good thunderstorm, clean sheets after a bath, cheesecake, movies, tea…but on occasion, and I’m sure he couldn’t understand this, it gets to be all too much. The feelings overwhelm and the world turns to a cacophonous cloud of noise that makes my skin crawl…like right now.

That’s the reason I’m combining two questions into one post and writing them a day early. It’s a raw moment. I took a big downturn today and I thought that maybe being completely honest in this state might be helpful in some way to someone somewhere.

The questions respectively are: Have you ever attempted suicide and have you ever written a suicide note? I’ve decided to combine them because two posts on this subject would just be too much. As of now, I’m having an anxiety attack. Panic more like. I’ve had to stop a few times because my heart is pounding so hard I can hear it. I’m not sure if it’s the subject matter or the fact that I’m feeling badly again over the loss of people I’ve cared about. It truly feels like I have a big hole in my chest…but moving on…

There have been many times I’ve come very close to ending myself. Why do I admit that? Why talk about such a dark subject at all? Because I’ve managed to thankfully make it past them. When I had nowhere to go, no job, and a baby to feed I came closer than I ever have. I remember the utter hopelessness and isolation I felt. I felt completely worthless and overwhelmed. It was raining non stop for days. I remember just sitting in the car crying harder than I ever had and trying to decide whether to bring the baby inside the church and leave him so he’d have a chance. No notes. Not ever. It was always a private thing.

In the end I managed to talk myself out of that idea and conquer the overwhelming feelings. Like every time before it, I’m so thankful I did. So many joys I would never have known came in the years that followed.

I had one worse one, right before my breakdown. I was at work, once again feeling overwhelmed and undervalued…invisible. The only way I can truly describe it was despair. I felt heavy, pulled down and the room I was sitting in suddenly seemed darker than it had been. There was once again that feeling of having a hole in my chest but simultaneously a pain like being speared through the heart at the same time. I was ready to disappear. Everything was too much but one thought was enough to bring me out of it. My son. I thought about how I’d never see him or hold him again and how he’d never be able to understand. I survived that day too and again, I’m so lucky I did. Some days he’s the only thing I have to look forward to, but one reason is enough. He’s always been more than enough.

So now that I’m once again in pain and having a panic attack over the loss of a friend and someone I loved completely, I realize that having those anchors is vital. Whatever it is for you, hold on to it for dear life. There really will be something you’ll be glad you didn’t miss.

Day 29 – All my friends are imaginary

Who is your closest or most special friend that you’ve never met and what do they mean to you? How did you cross paths? Talk about how you “met” them: Facebook, Twitter, an online support group, etc.

Well isn’t that a pip? It took me a while on this one. Is it a typo? Is it my best friend or is this a build-a-best-friend workshop where I can stuff him with rainbow fluff, hug him and squeeze him and name him George? Given how “Met” is in quotations I’m guessing I can make up anyone I please. Do I wanna be besties with the Joker? Sheldon Cooper? Emily Bronte? Did I meet them in a bar, at Gotham’s diviest bar? At a physics symposium or run across Wolverine while renting a horror flick at Blockbuster? The mind reels with possibilities.

I’ve decided to do a bit of a split between the two on this occasion. Actually, it’s a stretch but go with me on this one and then see if it works for you.

I met her on a cold night in the dark back alley of one of my stories. She’s always there, lurking behind the sharp German expressionist corners of the more dramatic passages. She’s a hard one to pin down and I’m not sure I actually have yet. I only get snippets through the fog banks but what I see of her is both aloof from the world and longing for it at the same time. She has the loneliness of an outsider forever watching through the windows into the happier stories in this world. She comes to see me when I’m at my breaking point. offering me her companionship when there is no other and reassuring me when I need a reflective opinion. Sometimes she’s unruly and says horrible things. She says things I would never let anyone else get away with but she’s just trying to protect me. She wants me to remember danger and to tread lightly which I’m grateful for but sometimes I’d like her to shut up about it already.

She is beautiful but doesn’t know it. She’s talented at a number of things but denies it. On occasion though, she shows me that I can do what she cannot. She roots me forward and energizes my dreams. She’s there when I need to vent frustration. She’s there to cry with. She’s there when I’m angry and need a voice. She’s everything to me and all at once nothing to me. I try to get past her and then try to find her. She’s the only one who will walk with me until the end and I need to cherish her more, compliment her more, giver her more time and affection. She deserves my love as much as everyone else in my life and more. She deserves recognition and remembrance. She may be flawed, but she’s the only one I’ve got to keep me company when I’m alone.

What is that song? I’ve been to Paradise but I’ve never been to me? Horrible song, agreed, but there is a point in there somewhere. If I need to make up an imaginary friend, I may as well get to know the little me that’s in there that goes ignored and chastised most of the time. Not a horrible idea I think. Sure I’d rather hang with Wolverine eating popcorn, but maybe I’m not such bad company in the long run.

Day 22 – Sweet Villainy

What fictional character in a movie, tv show, or book do you identify with and why? On to a juicy one. As every one of my friends knows, I have always had a thing for the villains.  It seems odd, I know, to go straight to baddies when asked who you identify with, but there really is a good reason, besides I never think of villains as bad per se. A villain is simply someone who’s had their happy ending taken away, and who grows increasingly desperate in their means to reacquire it. We all want the hero to win to make the world better but we rarely identify with him. Everyone loves a good villain because they’ve been damaged, hurt, and forever changed by it. Everyone can relate to someone else’s pain, can’t they?

As usual, I’m torn between two answers. The first is Queen Regina from Once Upon a Time, aka the Evil Queen. Since my son started calling me Regina, and my ex-husband jumped on that bandwagon, I’ve been paying attention to her story. She’s lonely, wounded and trying so hard to be better for her son. That does strike a chord, plus she can actually shoot fireballs from her hands and keeps boxes of hearts, who wouldn’t love that? Ok, maybe it’s only me… Something about getting older as a woman also makes that character resonate in the classical Snow White sense and really, I wouldn’t mind keeping specimen hearts in jars somewhere. Yes, I do watch Oddities now that you ask.

However, like Highlander, there can be only one and the character closest to my heart (was that a bad pun?) has to be my beloved Captain Hook. In this case, it is NOT the Once Upon a Time version, nor the Disney. Everyone who knows me is familiar with my Hook obsession. I gave a good amount of my arm for a tattoo of him so that should say something. Given the way he’s usually portrayed, that may seem like a bizarre choice but when I read the original book to my son. I found a character I didn’t entirely recognize or expect. 

Firstly, I love his style. I grew up in a house that was all about the velvet drapes and gold scroll work. That ornate classical style reminds me of something I lost when I left my childhood home for my father’s more minimalist style. My place now, with a little more work, could be Hook’s captain’s quarters. If I could explain how much velvety drapery and gold is going on in my apartment, well, it would be obvious why I love the man’s extravagance.

Secondly, Hook has a temper to be sure, but he’s an extremely lonely character; brilliant and tormented by an immature boy who cares nothing about the damage he’s caused. He is most often described in the book as melancholy. He feels all alone, even around his crew because they don’t understand him. He talks to himself, deflated, because he’s so terribly alone. He’s been injured, lost something vital to him and is left to deal with the fallout. In that way, anyone who’s been left to pick up the pieces after being injured by someone indifferent to the injury they’ve caused can relate to him…you know like that guy who broke your heart and was out partying the next day and moved on like you never existed? You know how you were tempted to slash his tires and lay waste to his truck like Carrie Underwood sang about? You just wanted him to feel something like you felt, right? (Or kind of like how my husband left me alone with a kid to raise and flitted around like a demon sprite with no responsibilities…Yeah, like that) He simply wants recognition for his loss. Instead, he has his attacker flaunt his victory and freedom at every opportunity with no remorse and worse, a cocky pride. If you’ve ever tried to get someone who doesn’t care feel something for what he’s done to you, well, that’s all Hook is trying to do and as a reward, he’s portrayed as a villain for doing so. 

Lastly, he’s an example of duality. Here is a character who was well-educated, elegant, and well-spoken. He was an Etonian and a PIRATE! It doesn’t get more rebellious than that. In that way, he’s totally punk rock. I’ve never seen Hook as a villain. I see him as the book says, a not wholly un-heroic character who is tragic in his way. I can guarantee I’m the only one who can’t watch his demise without tears, especially with a pile of creep children cheering on the crocodile, but that’s alright with me. If no one else can relate, I have my lonesome companion in print and under my skin reminding me to let go and disengage, reminding me of what I can become if I don’t and where it leads. At the very least he reminds me that I really need some cooler coats.

Day 12 – Victory!

I wanted to say that my proudest accomplishment was my son, but I can’t really take credit for that, at least not all the way. I steer a little here and there but he’s his own driver. It’s also a cop out answer.

An accomplishment should be something that you plan and work toward and complete from beginning to end without quitting. That’s what makes my answer hard. I’m not really great at celebrating victories or taking note of small steps, which really is a lousy habit. I tend to notice the things I didn’t do. I never learned to swim. I can’t ride a bike (no, really), I never got that degree out of indecision…

An accomplishment is something that should have you falling asleep in your corn flakes, buying extra concealer for the dark circles, and drowning in coffee. Thinking back, I do this every year in a contest called NaNoWriMo. National Novel Writing Month, It’s really more of a challenge than a contest because you don’t really win anything other than a little winners badge and the satisfaction of knowing you’ve written 50,000 words. I’ve finished every year for the past few. I have a bunch of almost-books in the wings just sitting there waiting to become something. 

One of them, however, I actually went back to, revised, revised again, and revised again until I had a 300 page piece of…work. I stayed up day and night for weeks. I drank tons of coffee. My eyes went blurry. I did laps. I procrastinated. I tore out hair, I yelled out loud and sat alone at my desk in the middle of a world of my own making. It was mostly a filthy world because I was too tired and engrossed to do much cleaning, or actually anything else, but hey, I was dedicated. I wrote when I hated writing. I had fantastic moments of sudden inspiration. I came up with things that were amazing that I can’t believe I wrote and then I came up with things that were horrid that I can’t believe I wrote. The experience was both wonderful and so much more difficult than I can ever describe.

The book is still nowhere near perfect. It’s still not agent ready let alone sitting on a book store shelf, but I did see the story to the end. I fleshed it out and I intend to keep working on it until it is something that people will read. Now those people may be the population of my office and my family home, but hey, it’s people!

The point really is that I finally did have that experience of seeing something through. I know now that I can do it. The next time it will be a little easier and hopefully a lot better. I hope to have book signings and maybe a graphic novel (and maybe people arguing on a forum about what some nit picky thing in one of my chapters really was supposed to mean) one day. Why not dream big? There’s nothing to lose by dreaming. Anything can happen. Make it big and then a little bigger! I just want fan boys! Not too much to ask…

Day 5 – Uh, not really.

Today’s blogging challenge topic: The biggest misconception you think people have about single life. You know, when I started this challenge, I read through the questions, and while some of them seemed to make me think, I thought I knew where I was going in most cases. Today for example. I had an answer when I read the question, but like most of these so far, the real answer has come sneaking up on me like every one of my kid’s school projects.

I alluded to what I thought it was back on day one, that people assume there’s something wrong with you, but honestly there are so many, and so many that cancel each other out. There’s the idea that yes, indeed there’s something wrong in your old noggin that keeps you from “holding on to a man” (or woman) or some bad habit like being a serial cheater, a gold digger, cold-hearted…or, you know, an axe murderer… or whatever the case may be. There are others like maybe a lack of commitment on your part, a deep-seeded insecurity, attachment to your parent or pet, or unconscious issue that just makes you less than marriage material. The “Flawed” Theory. This can also be thought of as The “Crazy” Theory.

Then there’s the idea that single people are mad party animals who go out every night and lack any form of stability and quite probably go home with a different person every night (the misconception I think most married folk envy). Somewhere in her head your dear Aunt Martha believes that you’re sneaking out to a rave, wearing something indecent that should only see the light of night on Halloween, and snorting something that she takes for her angina. The “Party Animal” Theory, aka The “Player” Theory.

And there’s the one that I’m going with. Now, this one I think is the most insidious because up until the past few days, I believed it myself. That’s right folks, I fell for it. It’s the one that says that if you’re single, you’re miserable and lonely. The lonely single watching tv crying into their Lean Cuisine or Pizza for One. The image I’ve held forever is from one of my favorite films, Hitchcock’s Rear Window. One of the neighbors that Jimmy Stewart spies on through his lens is one he dubs Miss Lonely Hearts. She’s a single woman who dines alone pretending that her prince charming is across the table from her. She laughs, she dances, she makes interesting conversation. She acts as if he’s there. When she ends up with a real date, the guy turns out to be a cad. (Yes, I said cad!) She slaps him and cries and goes back to the man of her dreams in her dreams. This is the circle of disappointment I’d convinced myself life as a single woman was bound to be.  The “Lonely Hearts” Theory.

The other night when I realized that I felt more free than lonely, that misconception came crashing down. Suddenly I didn’t feel bad. I didn’t feel the need to need. I looked around and realized that I knew people that lived quite happily alone and that I could have been one of them all this time if I hadn’t been so busy making myself miserable pining for what I didn’t have instead of being more grateful for what I did have. I could be happy enjoying my own company. I didn’t have to buy into the idea that single meant lonely. It doesn’t.

Now some of these may be true for some single people and most likely more than a few, after all, clichés are clichés for a reason, but as a single mother I can tell you that I can afford to be neither the party animal, unstable or completely crazy. I just happen to be on my own.

I’ve seen my fair share of crappy relationships, silent relationships, faked relationships, abusive relationships, and episodes of All in the Family to know that everybody coupled isn’t necessarily living in bliss. Being single can mean that I don’t want to be in one of those. I want to be appreciated. I want to be paid a little attention, actually way more than a little. I want to be listened to, respected, and missed when I’m not around. I will settle for no less than that because I would do no less for the other person. Being single simply means that I have not yet found someone willing to do the same for me. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, or anything to misconstrue.