The other day Rachel asked me the question of whether I liked (or didn't mind) being alone or was it just easier. I don't even recall now what we were talking about, but I remember the question seemed to come at me from beyond left field - like someone had just tossed a ball from the street back into the ballpark.
Anyway, I decided that this felt too much like I'd been laid out on the psychologist's couch, so I decided that instead of me answering this question for her amusement/analytical/research/curiosity purposes, I'd open the floor for us both to address this subject separately on our respective pages. She has done so, and reading Rachel's reply I felt myself to be driving right down the middle of the road, decidedly taking in the scenery ... seeing green grass on each side, but sticking to the road.
Well I don't drive that way. (Where is this metaphor going? Oy, I do think too much.) To hear my passengers tell it I'm often too close to the center or too close to running off the sides, and I veer in between these two "extremes" for the duration of the trip. (This is a nice parallel to how I actually am I think, but I'm consistent.)
Still I've been trying to figure out what, if anything, can be said in response to such a question. Do I like being alone or is it just easier? Um, I feel this is one of those loaded questions. If I like it, doesn't that, in some way or another, make it easy? Who likes hard stuff? (Jolly ranchers and the NYT crossword puzzle notably excluded.)
The question felt like it was just one in passing, and I'm sure Rachel couldn't have imagined it'd spur this much rambling (but then again, maybe she knows me better than that for which I give her credit), but it was raining 20 minutes ago and now the sun is back out (this is like the third time today that this has happened), so to avoid dressing improperly to try and go out, I decided to stay in and read and write and badger Mags with my babbling.
Do I like being alone or is it just easier?
(I'll give the honest answer to this question, as best as my rambling mind will permit. Not that I haven't been honest this entire time, but I often think that when it comes to talking about certain things people breeze by them in an attempt to keep the defense mechanisms well oiled. I can tell you that if she'd asked me that in person, I'd have found a joke to crack in a hot hurry, I'd have started talking about some passerby, something, anything, rather than have to look someone in the eye and commence with this conversation. But. And this is both intriguing and comforting to me, that the one medium in which I've always been fervently honest is in my writing and so to deviate from that now would just be awful. I like constancy, remember?)
(Judging from the rambling nature of yet another post, I'm beginning to wonder if I'm too constant ...)
Digression over, just let me adjust my school marm outfit as this high neck frilly collar itches ...
Let us begin. Having been alone for virtually - no, my entire - adult life, I am in no real position to claim either of the options faithfully, as it's hard to know if I'd like being with someone better than I'd like being single. I am a girl who is used to options (I also have taken enough science classes to know that every experiment need have at least an A and a B), so I at least need something to which I can compare being alone.
Though I wonder if it's easier to be with someone than it is to be alone. So many have argued (and it appears rightfully so) that our society is geared more towards couples - Valentine's Day; look at movies, so many stories are about finding that other - there's even that Lake House movie with Sandra Bullock. I mean how badly do we want to find that significant other when we'll reconsider time itself, in that it's not chronological, but spatial or metaphysical or whatever...; look at the way I cringe when it's springtime and I can't find a bench in the park because couples are parked on them cuddling up, lounging and cooing at each other; look at the way I wince when again in the fall (my other preferred season when I feel most hopeful for other reasons than this to be sure) some man tucks his coat around his girl and they shuffle off through the leaves together; look at the way celebrity couples' names have morphed to become one. We are all imagining ourselves with so-and-so, wondering how our names would conjoin with someone else's. Hi. We're Daneorge. Daneorge Rooney. I mean, I used to wonder how I'd alter my signature - would I just keep my name? Well obviously it depends on his last name. It has to go, you know; I mean it has to flow ...
Because it almost feels like I really am Bridget Jones-ish in that the clock is constantly ticking. Couples aren't constantly being askedabout their togetherness, yet there's something inherently curious about why someone is single (as if folk actually are covered in fish scales or something). When someone announces that they're engaged or married, some people want to know how they made it happen? Where did they find so-and-so and how? How long? Oh that's so great. We smile. I'm so happy for you. Eyes brighten. Good for you. Yay. There's an eagerness to discover, a leaning in to glean, there is hope, it's the white is good in the dichotomy where black equals darkness and loneliness. Seek the light.
Now when people get divorced or they break up, brows furrow, our faces make that eek! face and we frown, we lean back, we cross our arms in what we secretly hope is the equivalent of placing red marks on doors to avoid your plague, I mean plight. We do not ask, "So, tell me how did you find, um, uh, yourself? Not how did you find yourself, not like you were lost or anything - that's so silly sounding isn't it, but alone? How did you find yourself alone? I mean, what happened? Not what happened. I don't mean to be all up in your business, but, uh, you know, where did it go wrong? I'm not meaning to pry I just want to know (what you did so I can avoid that if at all possible). Oh nevermind, how are you doin'?"
I feel inundated with images of goofily smiling people from the match.com's of the world. I hear my great aunt Ella Mae telling me that I am only going to find a good man in the church even as almost every woman I know who found their man in the church has one eyebrow wildly cocked while snapping green beans telling me, "Girl, don't go in church lookin' for no man. That's the worst place. They crazy, slick or something is wrong with them. Look at Uncle so-and-so. I found him in the church. Honey, go for the Lord, pay your tithes and keep it movin'..."
So in this meantime, I find that I just have to try really hard, and it requires a concentration that sometimes pains me, but it's vital to just focus on me. Just me. I mean there's plenty here upon which to focus (and no, that's not literally intended, although ...), because I consider myself to be a whole person in the sense that I haven't grown up with the expectation that I am supposed to find someone ... Easter egg hunting for a mate. You know what I'm saying, there are some people who always dreamed they'd be married, have kids, etc. - you know those people. They had dollhouses. Their Barbies had Kens. I know them and I love them. They're just not me. Me? I was all about me some GI Joes, Hot Wheels, my bike and some Transformers ... and what does that tell us today I wonder? And yes, it's probably quite obvious that the relationships I've witnessed made their indelible marks on the way in which I view relationships, and there are flaws there, but for some reason I think this has made me cognizant of the fact that I have to make myself more aware because I can't be in a relationship just because that's what you're supposed to be doing, it's the next logical step, it's the only way to get family to shut up, etc.
After all, I thought I was supposed to go to college immediately, quick, fast and in a hurry, after high school, and I also thought I had to know what I was going to college for and how I was going to use that education, and I also thought I needed to be out in 4 years to cut costs (seriously, where did I get that information?), and I had to get a job, I had to listen to this and read that, I had to fit ... in ... somewhere, I had to get "it" (seriously the most frigginly enigmatic pronoun of all time) together and my, what a tangled web has been woven of those lies.
So no. Perhaps the best way to ensure love remains pure for me is just to leave it ...
Alone.