Out of Practice
I am apparently totally out of practice at being alone. Even though I have insisted more times than I can count that I'm not getting enough time to myself--that I can't think or pray or be myself without more alone time--when I actually have it, I get a little frantic, or bored. T and I have negotiated together-as-two, together-with-friends, together-as-family, and alone, over and over and over, a constant dance, an ongoing conversation.
This week, since Thursday, T has been working nights. I had Friday off, and no activities this weekend for work--spring break, even though I still needed to work, was calmer, slower paced, with a long weekend at the end.
With T gone and S in bed, I could have literally done anything on Thursday night. But instead of just deciding to take the time to myself, I started trying to find someone to hang out with early in the day. No one was around, naturally. and even if anyone had been, it would have likely been at least a little bit awkward. It's been so long since I've hung out with anyone outside the family because I always ask people on short notice; I can't ever predict what the night will be like, either work-wise or family-wise. And, for the first couple years after adopting S, I turned down so many invitations to go out and had to ask so many friends to stop dropping by so I could get her through the day that people stopped calling me. In the midst of this, I felt abandoned, angry, and said and did some things I still regret, leading only, of course, to fewer people interested in getting the energy up to spend time with me.
So what did I do? Last night, as soon as S was in bed, I rushed to the late movie. It was something I'd wanted to see, the last night it was playing in town--but still. I did end up coming home, blogging, and writing the first draft of a poem, which was good--but I needed to be *doing* something first.
Tonight, I tried again to connect with a friend--no luck. I got a call and excitedly called back--she was just looking for someone else's number. I have a wedding invite list longer than there is space in the hall--but I can't say that I've spent much time recently having real conversations with most of the people on that list. Still, I know they care about me, admire me in some ways, or pity me in others--in short, that they care enough to show up for the big transitions in S's life, in my life, and for our wedding.
I felt restless, irritated. I tried hard not to reflect on how I used to have a circle of close friends who were always around, on all the things I did to lose them--I spent a retreat on this topic, grieved, worked through what I needed to face, moved on. I don't want to go down that dark road again.
After that, I tried, halfheartedly, to finish the rest of the work that needs to get done before classes begin Monday while S read on the couch. I couldn't concentrate. "I want to do something," I said to her, and she looked up, puzzled. We'd spent all day in a neighboring, larger town, had eaten out, gone shopping. She halfheartedly pitched a trip to the local Shopko, but I turned that one down. We'd purchased everything we actually needed, and then some, already.
"Or we could just cuddle and read," she said.
And so we did. For the first time in what feels like years, I really settled into a book, reading it almost cover to cover in one sitting. Every year I teach the writers who come to our annual writer's festival, but I'm always teaching them haphazardly--reading their work rapidly the week before I teach it, finding one key strength to highlight that will in some way teach my students about good writing, then finding a way to get the students to imitate some key aspect of their writing as a writing exercise. This time, I was really reading the book in the way I used to read when I was a kid--voraciously, attentively, without any regret about what I might be missing while reading.
S eventually got restless. She asked me, for the thousandth time, "If something ever happens to me, promise you'll take care of the dog? The cat?" Yes, and yes. This question used to terrify me. I confess that the first time she asked me, I checked on her in bed several times, waking up certain she'd died in her sleep, or worse, tried to kill herself. But now I know that this question, like the question, "Will you always love me, no matter what I do?" is just a necessary touchstone in an ongoing path of growing trust. I told her once that I never expected her to completely trust me, but that I wouldn't disappoint her, except by hopefully dying before her, but that I planned to do that when I was very old. This relaxed her. But after I answered her questions, she announced that it was time to take the dog for a walk, then bed.
I kept reading after her bedtime, and now I'm here, at the page, and I feel calm, even though there's work to be done that didn't get done this week, even though I didn't get any social time in. I got to actually read a book for no purpose whatsoever except to read it, as I used to do daily. I remembered what it was like to be perfectly happy with a Friday night in.
This week, since Thursday, T has been working nights. I had Friday off, and no activities this weekend for work--spring break, even though I still needed to work, was calmer, slower paced, with a long weekend at the end.
With T gone and S in bed, I could have literally done anything on Thursday night. But instead of just deciding to take the time to myself, I started trying to find someone to hang out with early in the day. No one was around, naturally. and even if anyone had been, it would have likely been at least a little bit awkward. It's been so long since I've hung out with anyone outside the family because I always ask people on short notice; I can't ever predict what the night will be like, either work-wise or family-wise. And, for the first couple years after adopting S, I turned down so many invitations to go out and had to ask so many friends to stop dropping by so I could get her through the day that people stopped calling me. In the midst of this, I felt abandoned, angry, and said and did some things I still regret, leading only, of course, to fewer people interested in getting the energy up to spend time with me.
So what did I do? Last night, as soon as S was in bed, I rushed to the late movie. It was something I'd wanted to see, the last night it was playing in town--but still. I did end up coming home, blogging, and writing the first draft of a poem, which was good--but I needed to be *doing* something first.
Tonight, I tried again to connect with a friend--no luck. I got a call and excitedly called back--she was just looking for someone else's number. I have a wedding invite list longer than there is space in the hall--but I can't say that I've spent much time recently having real conversations with most of the people on that list. Still, I know they care about me, admire me in some ways, or pity me in others--in short, that they care enough to show up for the big transitions in S's life, in my life, and for our wedding.
I felt restless, irritated. I tried hard not to reflect on how I used to have a circle of close friends who were always around, on all the things I did to lose them--I spent a retreat on this topic, grieved, worked through what I needed to face, moved on. I don't want to go down that dark road again.
After that, I tried, halfheartedly, to finish the rest of the work that needs to get done before classes begin Monday while S read on the couch. I couldn't concentrate. "I want to do something," I said to her, and she looked up, puzzled. We'd spent all day in a neighboring, larger town, had eaten out, gone shopping. She halfheartedly pitched a trip to the local Shopko, but I turned that one down. We'd purchased everything we actually needed, and then some, already.
"Or we could just cuddle and read," she said.
And so we did. For the first time in what feels like years, I really settled into a book, reading it almost cover to cover in one sitting. Every year I teach the writers who come to our annual writer's festival, but I'm always teaching them haphazardly--reading their work rapidly the week before I teach it, finding one key strength to highlight that will in some way teach my students about good writing, then finding a way to get the students to imitate some key aspect of their writing as a writing exercise. This time, I was really reading the book in the way I used to read when I was a kid--voraciously, attentively, without any regret about what I might be missing while reading.
S eventually got restless. She asked me, for the thousandth time, "If something ever happens to me, promise you'll take care of the dog? The cat?" Yes, and yes. This question used to terrify me. I confess that the first time she asked me, I checked on her in bed several times, waking up certain she'd died in her sleep, or worse, tried to kill herself. But now I know that this question, like the question, "Will you always love me, no matter what I do?" is just a necessary touchstone in an ongoing path of growing trust. I told her once that I never expected her to completely trust me, but that I wouldn't disappoint her, except by hopefully dying before her, but that I planned to do that when I was very old. This relaxed her. But after I answered her questions, she announced that it was time to take the dog for a walk, then bed.
I kept reading after her bedtime, and now I'm here, at the page, and I feel calm, even though there's work to be done that didn't get done this week, even though I didn't get any social time in. I got to actually read a book for no purpose whatsoever except to read it, as I used to do daily. I remembered what it was like to be perfectly happy with a Friday night in.
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