It’s been six months since my last blog entry. I was disturbed while reviewing the two happy-go-lucky entries. I’ve fallen so far off the optimism map since then that I hardly resemble that fair-weather blogger. Since then, there was some family tumult, a cold and windy vacation in the Bahamas with an anti-Semitic self-proclaimed wench, a job change, and the thrill of the arrival of my second niece. I also became delighted and disappointed three times at the prospects of three different men and then had a landmark birthday. The one that science demands I get smart about if I want to have children. I was pretty numb about it going into May, my birthday month. I managed to psychically anesthetize myself in the weeks leading up to and around my birthday without employing any artificial factors. A thorough study would reveal that I unconsciously sustained a measured level of distraction in spite of the impending calendar fact. But like any successful anesthetic, there is an inevitable recovery period out of its imposed sleep and into awakening. I can’t tell now if I’m awake with some disillusionment to reconcile, or if disillusionment is my new reality and the thing to awaken to. Yes, a very different blogger from the New Year’s blogger.
Disillusionment: The condition or fact of being disenchanted. The haze-inducing questions are such: Will it be a fleeting condition or a fact? How can I make the past not matter? How do I wholeheartedly believe in the possibility, the mere chance, that I’ll meet the right man in time to consider starting a family? Is this last lap the lap where my self-awareness suddenly accelerates so exponentially that it all comes together, inversely diminishing foibles of the past as if they were essential to the winning equation, or is this last lap plainly the last lap of my flailing between faith and the futility of faith until I enter my next decade without a life partner?
I want ample time to enjoy the relationship I’ve prepared for my whole confounding dating life. I realized recently that it’s possible that I’ve never been in front of, literally geographically situated in front of, an appropriate man (age appropriate, attractive and solvent) who is looking for a relationship. I’ve dated men with varying permutations of notable characteristics, but who were not intentionally trying to create something long-lasting with a woman. It seems that just when I was getting a grip on a new holistic and self-loving vernacular, my birthday came imminently closer like an iceberg encroaching on a leak ridden ship, and my shadow, the one I’d painstakingly suppressed, stepped up to the bow.
And my shadow has been steering since. I still consult the same books and happy-talking cds, move through my favorite yoga poses, schedule new activities, enjoy long walks and outings with friends and family. But there is no distraction now, no attempted repose, that sufficiently quiets a low-boiling trepidation about the possibility of moving through these next few years alone. I have friends who encourage me to write the comic strips I used to produce mocking my dating experiences, but I don’t find any of it so funny anymore. I’m authentically sober. I don’t mean dull or without a willingness to be light given an opportunity to gest, but overall, at this pivotal juncture, the absurdities in the name of unrequited love don’t seem like laughing matters.
Sober may sound grim, sometimes insinuates a monasticism, but really it’s not. I’m grown-up is really what I am. Among other logistical shifts, I now support myself entirely, no bones from the folks. I know, a rite of passage long overdue. I now calibrate all of my energy to make the best use of my time and my money. Maybe my perceived shadow is actually a new developmental layer of maturity I haven’t experienced before, the kind that prompts me to make better and informed decisions, and peer through a new lens. Maybe, at long last, maturity is now steering the ship.
Written July 27, 2010
