{ a sunday essay }

it's easier to write about being solitary than single. a single person discussing being single is boring and cliché. but i write about it because it's the only thing i know. i also write about it because by writing it, i can know it. knowledge is important to me. with knowledge comes understanding, resignation, and maybe even embrace.

//

we sat at the end of the bar. i drank gin.
we talked about a girl he's not sure about.
i wanted to ask if he talks with her like he does with me.
give me a hug before you go, he said.
i know he finds me beautiful and interesting,
but that doesn't change anything.
if it did, i'm not even sure i'd want it.
i'm beginning to feel as though i'm past love.
not past being loved. past love.
like a moon that's risen and fallen, not to appear again.

//

i have a friend who's been having a hard time. two days ago i dropped everything to bring her coffee and hold her heart. i told her i would be flexible and available these next few days, able to be present if it would be helpful. i offered to take vacation time to attend an appointment with her this week. as an unmarried person without children i almost feel like it's my responsibility to be as free and available as i can, since i don't have the obligations of a spouse or children. (more accurately, i feel like married people with kids expect that i have all the free time in the world because i don't have a husband or kids. but that's tangential to the current subject.)

so over the past couple days i've followed up closely with this friend, reminding her i'm available if she needs to talk but trying to be unobtrusive and aware that when we're struggling, other people can be smothering in their well-intentioned attempts to care for us. as it turns out, she kindly refused my availability entirely and said she's too tired to see anyone. i understand this because sometimes in crisis i need a lot of space.

i was hurt, however, when i visited her blog (at her behest) and read entry after entry about her husband and children, particularly an entry which recalled in detail an outing their family made with "their best friends." last year their families went on an outing and the table was full of toddlers, and this year there were two new babies and the toddlers were in kindergarten, and oh, how time flies, and blah blah blah.

(there it is, that damn "best friends" title again. i despise it and am doing my best to eliminate it from my own vocabulary --- not that it's necessary, because somehow i doubt that anyone in the world is as emotionally neurotic and sensitive as i am. but it feels exclusive to throw those words around and i've been stung enough times that not using them is a choice i'm making.)

as i zoomed out and thought about why that mommy blog entry bothered me, i realized that it wasn't as much with specific regard to my relationship with this particular friend as it was because the plain truth is this: i don't belong in the realm of women who are mothers. i can't understand them like they can understand each other. nor can i support them in a truly empathetic way. i am on the outside of this circle and as hard as i may try, i simply won't gain entrance unless i have a child.

while having a child isn't my primary desire or goal right now (so feeling left out of the mommy club isn't really my right), i still feel left out. because i'm now in that stage of life where people have "couple friends" and "family friends" and "kid friends" and by default, most of their lives revolve in these orbits. of course this is entirely appropriate: when you get married and have a family, the bulk of your energy is devoted to those relationships and the tangible (as well as intangible) maintenance necessary to keep the planets spinning and galaxies functioning.

where does that leave me, an unattached and heretofore barren unit of humanity?
at home alone on my couch reading mommy blogs, apparently.

//

i used to lack self-confidence of any kind.
i never could have seen myself as beautiful,
much less intelligent or interesting.
now i have confidence i am at least interesting,
and i believe other people find me as such.
but that hasn't changed, and doesn't change, anything.
still no one chooses me.

i could pay, he said.
but then we'd have to make out.

i didn't recoil, and it didn't excite me.
i had no fear, no desire. though
for a fleeting moment i remembered how
one's breathing changes, how it feels
to have someone else's hands on you.
i shook my head and laughed.

//

so really, where does the fact that my uterus hasn't incubated another human leave me in a world that, as i continue to age, will be increasingly saturated with women whose bodies have brought another person into the world?

my position in the world of women feels awkward to me because as i mentioned, i'm not a woman who's pining for a child. nor am i a woman (and i never thought i'd see the day i could say this without crying) who's necessarily pining for a relationship.

it's a reflection of the subculture i grew up in and the region of the world i live in now, but these things leave me feeling like not only less of a woman, but less of a human being.

to be fair: if you're me, feeling alienated is, for the most part, your own damn fault. i tend to exclude myself more harshly than others ever would. but i know i'm not alone in feeling alienated from the secret world of women because i'm not married (or engaged or dating or even looking, for that matter) and i don't have kids. not only that, but i'm not actively seeking those things. i'm a super-alien.

even more awkwardly, it's not as though i'm putting domesticity on a back burner because i'm so proficient at or driven in my career (one of the primary reasons it seems women are excused from being focused on domestic pursuits).

it's like i'm the most hardcore femme-underachiever in the history of all things.

//

it was ambitious to call this an essay; in reality, it's a reeling freewrite, like a massive flock of birds swirling inexplicably around a generically central location in a chaotic, beating cloud. if i had to identify a single subject or point i'm trying to talk about or make, i couldn't. i typed for a straight hour without interruptions and without pausing and re-reading everything i've just said makes me think i'm trying to talk about self, self as woman, and belonging, for a start.

//

so he didn't push you up against a wall or anything? he asked.
no, i said, trying not to look aghast. you knew him. what do YOU think?
yeah, he conceded. i'm sorry.

at this point i realized he was genuinely sorry i hadn't been handled passionately, and i found it both poignant and piercing. because no, in that relationship i wasn't handled that way, but i wouldn't have appreciated it anyway. and because the person i was talking to was operating under the assumption that i regretted not having sex, or not being treated as someone that a man wanted to have sex, with. and once again i wonder at this point if i should feel sorry for myself...if a woman is not truly a woman until a man desires her physically and --- for lack of a more romantic way to put it --- capitalizes on that desire.

//

so i have no idea where i fit into the grand puzzle of the world.
but i know me. on my own. separate from all of that.
i don't know how to measure myself against external standards anymore.

i used to identify with my percentages - my grades, my class rank, silly titles like "section leader" and "alto 1." things are much less quantitative now. but somehow standards and comparisons still occur so definitively: unmarried. divorced. childless. we still label and rank ourselves and each other and while it can be helpful and even welcome, that can also be isolating and reductive.

//

it's 42 minutes past by bedtime and i must stop.
i am not going to go back and edit this before publishing.
until next time.