Part of being alone is loneliness. Alone is one thing... loneliness is quite another. This is a dragon I wish on no one. Loneliness has many facets. Just one of them is the shame of being alone. Because our society is simply not made for people who are alone, you wind up feeling like you just don’t belong. That is when you get lonely. If you don’t belong alone, and there is no one for you to be with, what are you supposed to do? Simple, find someone or disappear.
Well, I found someone. Unluckily for me, it was someone who needed me a whole lot more than I needed her. I had enough demands on me, and I had just been disillusioned with love, so I wasn’t ready to give what was needed. Well, this female wouldn’t take that for too long, so very soon I was alone again. Hurt on hurt, shame on shame, devastation on devastation. These kinds of things can take the fun out of having relationships.
I may be a weak person. I’ve seen people bounce back from these experiences and find new one and only life mates in a matter of a few years, or even a few months. Not I. “Once burned, twice cautious.” I was “Twice burned, forever cautious!”
I mended myself for a couple of years. I built a series of activities that I enjoyed doing. Not too spectacular, but very pleasant for me and my mind. I had found a relaxed life style where I had no disharmony. I was the master of my own fate. I was a whole and happy person again. I would live out my life in a mellow state. I would even show the statisticians that they were wrong when they said that mated people live five or so years longer than alone-ones.
Well, as you might have guessed, I screwed it up. I let someone through my outer defense walls. And a good time was had by all, for a while.
But, once again, I had found someone who needed me a whole lot more that I needed her, and who needed an awful lot from me that I did not have to give. It was a struggle from the start. Loving can sometimes be a super-dependent state. This love wanted to depend on me, and wanted me to depend on her. I had just won a five year battle for my own independence and I was not going to surrender it easily.
Fed up! Yes, I think that was the parting phrase. Even though I had warned her that I would be a tough nut to crack, she wound up being angry at me, and frustrated with my reluctance to give everything I had to the relationship. I can understand that, but I was not about to give in. That caused more fed-uppedness. How frustrating it must be to have the person you are fed up with understand why you are fed up. Too bad, so sad, but I had I warned her.
So here I am, alone again. Even though I understand how I got here, I still have that sinking feeling in my stomach that tells me I failed again. I didn’t, you know. I won this time. I earned my independence, and I had to fight to keep it. I will pay a price, but I am free.
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The Body
I don’t like to use these words, especially when I’m trying to be positive in thought and expression, but today I’m not feeling well. Well it’s more than that, I’m a little ill. Well it’s even worse than that, I feel like something the cat dragged out!
Now that’s no big deal in itself, but it has reminded me of how much we really are a passenger in our own bodies. I only think of stuff like this when I’m sick. Somewhere along the line, we got the idea that we are in charge of what’s going on, but we aren’t even close. It may be even more serious than just being passengers in these bodies, we may actually be prisoners!
Think of this...
If the stupid body falls in the river, who gets wet?
If it gets hit by a garbage truck, who dies?
If it gets ill, who suffers?
We do, that’s who!
My most recent experience with this really started a few days ago in a Racquet Ball game where I was totally out of control. For those of you who are not familiar with the noble sport of Racquet Ball, I’ll give you a brief lesson.
Racquet Ball is an indoor sport that is “kind of” like tennis, and “kind of” not like tennis. Racquet Ball is like tennis in that you try to hit a ball with a racquet. It’s not like tennis in that when you make a bad shot you only have to look around in a small room to find the ball. Sometimes retrieving the ball in tennis can end up being an all day hike.
In Racquet Ball, instead of hitting the ball over a net, you hit it into a wall and try to make your opponent to miss the return shot by getting it to roll away from the wall on the floor. The object of tennis is to get your opponent to hit the ball into the net, out of bounds, or to just plain miss it. In both sports you also have the possibility of winning by actually killing your playing partner by inducing a heart attack. (This is a little publicized aspect of both sports.) Enough education, back to my story...
My playing partner and I usually have reasonably close, competitive games, but throughout this particular game I was lucky to find the ball, let alone hit the darned thing. I would see where the ball was, run up to it, get in position, swing at the appropriate time (a swing which would have scored a sensational point had it only been delivered a week earlier) and miss it by light years of time and space. Sometimes it seemed as if there were a large, gaping hole in my racquet.
The point of all this is not to bore you with game tales, but to discuss how little control we have over our bodies. My mind knew what was going on. It knew where I should be and what I should be doing, but my body just wouldn’t cooperate. “Why not?” you might ask. Well the silly thing was sick! I was fine, but the body wasn’t feeling well and it didn’t want to play. Who paid the price? I did, of course.
The price? I paid twice.
I lost. (A heavy price... I hate losing.)
I played badly. (Almost as hateful a price as losing.)
Today at work was a similar story. I had a lot of stuff I wanted to do, but my body had other things on its agenda. I wish I could be sure what they were. It was misfiring all over the place. First, my nose demanded constant attention. From time to time my whole body was racked by violent coughing and sneezing fits. Then it kept trying to go to sleep on me. I really thought that was funny, since it wouldn’t even consider that little activity the night before when I was really desperate for sleep.
Enough of this for now. I’ve registered my complaint for all the good that will do. How can I fix this problem? A body transplant, perhaps? We can get all sorts of transplants now, livers, kidneys, eyes, hearts, and all. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just shuck the whole thing and get one that really works all the time like we want it to?
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The Smile
Have you ever had someone smile at you for no apparent reason? This can be one of life’s most rewarding experiences... IF you have some idea why they’re smiling.
When I was first divorced and out on my own, at the tender age of 39 (Why I was on my own for the first time at 39 is another story). I was very aware of the expressions on the faces of all the people I encountered. This was especially true of female faces.
Now, when I had done something overt to elicit a smile, there was never a problem in my mind. I remember one young lady who was about thirty yards away across a busy downtown intersection who grinned at me when she noticed I had been staring at her for the last half block. That was perfectly understandable. I had paid her a compliment of sorts by appreciating her appeal. My reward was worth it. Of course, being in my car, and going in the opposite direction made her perfectly safe from any unwanted advances I might have contemplated. She would never know this, but even if I had been going her way I wouldn’t have followed up. Shyness rules my little corner of the world.
A nice little “Hello”, or “Good Morning”, always brings out a smile. This is a little off the point, but my absolute guaranteed smile getter is “Happy Monday!” I have yet to meet anyone who doesn’t stop with that one. It’s even better when you give out a “Happy Monday” on some day other than Monday. First of all, “Happy” and “Monday” are two words whose conjunction is absurd. S
econdly, “Happy” and “Monday” on day’s other than Monday naturally make the recipient think you are looney.
But now back to the unsolicited smiles. I don’t know how many of you out there are a little insecure, but I know I am, and whenever I get one of these unsolicited smiles I begin to suspect something. I’m never sure what to suspect, but I know there must be something wrong.
The first thing I do is to check to see if my fly is open. It never has been, but one of these days I know it will be.
Then I check to see if the kids have put some stupid sign on me. Now that has happened. I’ve never been sure if the smilers are pleased because they like to see someone else look foolish, their kids have done the same thing to them, they have done it to someone else, or they just plain think it’s funny to see a sign that says ,”Daddy is a NERD!” or “KICK ME!”.
Sometimes I think people are smirking about my hair-line. It happens that I am a little thin on top. Some people would say I’m flat out bald. I like to think of it as having transparent hair. Unfortunately, from time to time some of the strays on the side blow over to the top, and I look like one of those guys who can’t face reality and is trying to cover all of his balding acreage with two or three strands of hair. That’s about as worthwhile as trying to use a toothpick for an umbrella in a blizzard. There are other times when it doesn’t even have the grace to blow over the top. It just stands out on end and I wind up looking like a short Bozo the Clown.
Once, when I received one of these smiles in a grocery store, I quickly reached up to my ear. I was convinced I had a banana sticking out of it. (Actually I did have a banana in my ear, but it was in the other one. ) I have since turned that experience to my benefit. I always carry a banana with me and use it as a point maker during conversations. With this ploy I always know that if the banana is in my hand, there can’t possibly be one in my ear. The logic may be a little weak here, but so far it has worked.
One of these days I’m going to have to stop one of these smile givers and ask her what she is smiling about. Of course, that will require a lot of charm and grace. I mean you don’t just go up to someone and say, “Hey lady, what’s so funny?” That might ruin the spell. I can see it now...
Me: “Hey lady, what’s so funny?”
Lady: “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to, but...”
Me: “But what lady? Don’t you realize you are making a spectacle out of me?”
Lady: “Well, of course I didn’t. But it doesn’t look like you need any help with spectacles.”
Me: “That’s right lady! That’s right! Pick on a helpless, hapless, neurotic, paranoid soul. Don’t give a damn that you might be ruining his whole day. Just go ahead and make a mockery of him!”
Lady: “Well , GOODNESS! I think you are taking this much too seriously. After all, I was just...”
Me: “Yeah, yeah, just what? Huh? Go on tell me. Just what?”
Lady: “Well, I was smiling at the thought of a single man being alone in a grocery store.”
Me: “What do you mean single man? How do you know that?”
Lady: “Well no self respecting woman would let her husband, or even boyfriend go out in public with a purple shirt and pink tie, and white socks.”
Me: “So what’s wrong with white socks?”
Lady: “Oh, nothing really. And it wasn’t even the holes in them that caught my eye.”
Me: “Holes?”
Lady: “It was the two different kinds of shoes. And I wasn’t really smiling at you. I was trying to keep from laughing at my neighbor who had bumped into the egg stand because she was looking at the toilet paper sticking out of your pocket. She’ll be cleaning up that mess for weeks!”
I am beginning to feel very small.
She continued, “...but that’s all right. You have nothing to worry about. You see, I wasn’t really smiling at you anyway, was I? So go on now, don’t worry about a thing, you have nothing to be self-conscious about”
At this point I beat a hasty retreat out of there, thinking, “Well, at least she didn’t complain about my magazine selections.
Some people might have a hard time understanding my collection of Field and Stream, Football Week, Cosmopolitan, Redbook , and Newsweek.
Do you see what I mean? People smiling at you for no reason can cause real problems. That’s another reason I carry the banana. When I’m not using it as a pointer, I stick it in my ear. Then I know what they are smiling about...
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Thank You
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