C & B Day

Crash.  And.  Burn.

I hate it when this happens.

I've been doing the work for over five years now.  I meditate.  I write.  I think deep thoughts and silly ones, too.  I am usually living in a state of appreciation for the life I've built.

My home isn't luxurious, but I neither want nor need luxury.  It needs work, but is beyond comfortable.  I am confident of being able to give it the TLC it needs after my property sells.  It will be a little at a time, but that's OK.  My little bedroom and my bigger studio are filled only with things that make me smile.  Outside my windows are my flowers and blue skies filled with pretty white clouds.  Or deep gray, water-filled ones.  Which is fine, too.

I have the best family ever.  I have old friends and new friends who love me. I have a job I don't hate and I teach 150 of the greatest young people you'll find anywhere.  Each year.  The kind I trust with my future.

But every once in a while...

I get tired of the work.  I get tired of thinking, of feeling.  I get bored with writing and all of the faults in my life pour in on me at once.

I call these the Crash and Burn days.

They are triggered by a variety of things.  But when I examine the feeling, it usually gets the name

Lonesome.

I would feel the fishes and the whales and the sea urchins and maybe the merfolk.

 

I'm rarely lonely.  In fact, I'm now of the opinion that lonely has nothing to do with others and everything to do with simply being detached from myself.

But Lonesome is something else altogether and has everything to do with the absence of others.

I tried to connect with colleagues.  I do like my colleagues.  But socializing is something else.  One Friday I went to the weekly Mexican food gathering of singles.  All women.   It turned out all they wanted was to complain about our job.

What a waste of a good Friday night.

Then someone I've known for decades invited me to join her group of singles for potluck.  Turned out the others couldn't make it and it was just she and I at the table.  Which would have been fine except that she'd had so much wine that she fell asleep over the entrée.  At the table.  In the middle of my sentence.  After listening to her chatter for...  well, she's a good gal, but it was not an experience to repeat.  Later I overheard her and the other singles talking about a party coming up that they were calling a "Wine and Whine" party.  Seriously and honestly.  I was relieved not to be included.

Not lonesome.  Just makes me want to travel.

Last week I did something I have never done.  I was having a rough time wrapping my head around something that had happened the week before.  It had profound spiritual significance for me but I couldn't pull all the pieces together.  I've never called a friend for help with something like this, but I did.  I knew we have similar spiritual weirdness, so I thought at least she wouldn't make the sign of the cross and run from the restaurant.  We had a lovely time chatting over corn chips and tiny tacos for 2.5 hours.  But in the end, I was no closer to the understanding I wanted and she was trying to figure out who she could set me up with.

I don't want a date.  Well, I do, but not that kind.  I don't plan to marry, which I guess is good because single men are rare in this community.  A few years ago a dear friend suggested I try online dating and I told her I wasn't ready for that.  So, she set up a fake account on the site she had suggested to check some guys out for me.  A few days later she told me what she had done and reported that I was right, I wasn't ready for that.  I remember I just smiled and said, "They just want to get laid, right?"  She grimaced and nodded.

I don't need "servicing."  And I actually stopped going to the gym to avoid a man I'd known for forty years who, after my husband died, apparently decided I needed someone to tell me how to live my life.  He is mentally disabled from a massive stroke so I didn't have the heart to tell him off; just avoid him by not working out.  Which sounds stupid, but it's who I am.  I don't like hurting people's feelings but even more don't like people thinking I need someone to "take care of me."  Or, sometimes, I realize that the man I'm talking to actually is looking for someone to take care of him.  Like another guy at the gym who, after assuring me in three different conversations that he "does not date," asked one afternoon, "Why don't you come fix my dinner."  BTW, I introduced myself to him years ago, but he doesn't know my name.  Just resorts to "Teacher Lady" whenever we run into each other.

So, anyway, I decided to rant this out here.  I tried to find some art for the page, hence the pretty pictures, but to me they just reflect places I would love to be.  If I was sitting in that beach chair, or at the end of that pier, I would feel my connection to the people of the sea and would not be lonesome at all.

It is time to get ready for my trip to see my family.  My nephew is graduating.  I can't believe it.  And tonight is his final concert.  Bassoon in orchestra, and drumline.  Rather than dinner last night, I pick up my mom for a late lunch.  I anticipate hugs from her, from the staff at the restaurant and all followed by a fabulous concert.

But just to make sure I kick this mood, I will indulge myself with a small, special cupcake somewhere.  Twenty pounds down is nothing to sneeze at, so I will not buy a whole cake to worry over all week. 

But a tiny bundt will be compensation for surviving this mood.

Absolutely nothing lonesome about a beautiful full moon.  Just helps me feel connected to our beautiful Universe.