As an adult (in the legal, buy-cigarettes-and-lotto-tickets-without-repercussion sense), the longest I have been completely and utterly single was for about six months. And this was way, way back in 2002, when I still needed a map to drive any significant distance and had a cell phone with weird plans that included "peak hours" and had a limited number of minutes. Nothing earmarks history quite like technology.
ANYWAY, that half-year was wasted on a half-mature twenty-something that had, on more than one occasion, got to work late because he was up all night playing golf on his roommate's PS2, and had a tendency to work at a restaurant for seven or eight hours, and then "relax" after the arduous manual labor by spending another three or four hours at that same restaurant, doing a crossword puzzle and drinking enough coffee to develop a buzzing sound in my cranium...I hope. If it was audible to others then I may have sought out medical attention. Being single is usually the time when people aspire towards self-improvement, maybe as some personal journey towards enlightenment, or just to not look quite so chunky when they're ready to jump back into the whirlpool of mingling with other single people. I, on the other hand, took an incredibly boring vacation, where I rarely left the comfort of the metro area (and that metro area was Monroeville...not even Pittsburgh). A vacation from what? I've no idea. The sum of my responsibilities were to try to get to work on time, and pay enough bills so that I can sleep in a room at night, with electricity.
Despite doing a very poor job of selling myself as viable boyfriend material, I was suddenly no longer single, and from 22-ish onwards I was not single for pretty much the entire time, aside from a few months over the most recent holiday season. And, even then, those months were spent in the near-impossible realm of "dating"...where I saw maybe four people over three months and committed absolutely nothing to any of them, so everybody loses! And none of them have any particular interest in talking to me any more. Shocking, I know.
So, when I told my friend that I had just ended my latest relationship because I felt like being alone was the key to some sort of concrete, measurable improvements in my physical/mental/spiritual (sorta) beings, and that I wanted to take some time, some legitimate time to figure some shit out that's still rattling around in my brain that's trying its hardest to keep me out of the present, his most pressing concern was with my libido.
"But...you're not going to have sex?"
"What?"
"No sex?"
"I...guess that kind of comes with the territory of being single, right?"
"...you're weird."
I suppose he had some sort of point. I've almost always slept with people that I thought could be the other half of a blossoming relationship. Even if I just slept with them once, it was never under the auspice of "well, that was nice...I'll see you around!" And sure, in not-even-a-handful of rare occasions I've gone out alone and ended up in someone else's bed (HI MOM! ENJOYING THIS POST?), but that wasn't really the goal. It was never a focus, out of desperation or desire or anything in between. And I guess those one-night-stand-y occurrences were more out of shock, or a sense of some glitch in the matrix. Wait a second...she LIKES me? She's kissing me? Maybe the lights are too dim....
On the most primal level, human males generally have a "sex drive" embedded in them because of any animal's desire to propagate its species. The neanderthal parts of my brain aren't aware of the over-population problem, or how wary I'd be of bringing another human into a world that is so, so fucked up in so many ways. But, I think my relatively rational brain can suppress the urge to potentially make babies for a spell.
I decided to take a year. A year free of girlfriends, or dates, or anything even touching on the cusp of a "romantic" relationship. When I first said it, out loud, to myself (I've done this a lot in my life, so it's not totally indicative of my self-perpetuated solitude), it seemed like an eternity. So much can happen in a year! Exactly. Fucking exactly. But my rationale is that I am thirty-whatever now...in another year I'll still be thirty-whatever, but hopefully with a head on my shoulders that's made an effort to turn the world into something he wants instead of something he exists in, a head that's fulfilling its potential, and as a byproduct, maybe more apt to coexist with others.
The most annoying part about any job interview is the "where do you see yourself in X years?" question...not because it fails in telling the employer what kind of person you are, but because the employee knows that will tell the employer what kind of person you are. And how honest could you be under that situation? "Oh, I'd like to see myself managing this department, with a better understanding of the business and helping employees that are just starting off to grow and mature into the team players this company anticipates." Perfectly rational, compelling answer. And total bullshit. I know people that refuse to work anywhere for more than two years, because they get bored, because they like challenges, or because they think staying in the same company will stagnate their progression, financially. Would they ADMIT that in a job interview? Of course not.
But if my parents asked me that question, or anyone that knows me beyond my listed skills on a CV, I would be prone to honesty, because I already got that job of being their son, or their friend, and nothing I can say about my aspirations is going to coax them into firing me. But...I've nothing to tell them. If they asked me now I'd probably say "still living in this house, because I have a mortgage...hopefully a little better off than I am now." Wow...I'm totally living. Mom doesn't usually press me with those speculative questions, but she does ask if I'm going to get married again...or rather, she says "oh, you're not done having kids." I know those statements are probably typical of grandmothers that want to be grandmothers to an infant or toddler again, so it's easy to be dismissive, and if I never had another kid again I don't think she'd ever express her disappointment. But, still, it's surreal to have my lot in life pared down to my ability to assist in the reproduction process. As if that's all I'm good for.
Everything, right now, is a means to an end. I work to get paid to pay bills and save enough so I don't freak the fuck out when some costly tragedy ensues, and to eventually drive a nicer car. In my free time I try to keep my daughter amused or do laundry or space out online or watch the same stupid shows on Netflix over and over. Obviously, trying to raise a child to be an effective and contributing member of society is important to me, as it should be to any parent. But that's the breadth of my depressing long-term personal aspirations: to pay for a car in cash. A worthy goal, but without at least one or two meaningful, self-improvement-y goals, it's super depressing.
Lots of these posts...the ones that aren't pictures from my vacation or why I do volunteer work, center around what I want to do, or what I should be doing. And what I've learned is that these things are incredibly easy to ignore. Words are not at all adhesive. They're not even an effective check-and-balance...it's not like I look back on my own stupid posts and think oh right...I'm supposed to weigh much less by now. Prose is a fantastic way to describe what's already happened, but anything beyond the present is not only hypothetical, but totally dismissive. To you, of course, but especially to me. I could make up a hundred excuses as to why I haven't done what I said I was going to do.
But I don't have to re-read them to know that they're there, and how much that irritates me. The stagnancy of my life, even with the mini-crises and moments of mental exhaustion, with the heartaches and the heart-soarings...it's the most frustrating feeling, that life is just being lived, passively, without even trying to throw a wrench into things because you aren't quite sure why you would.
Life kind of needs wrenches though, doesn't it? Otherwise it's just some banal documentary...trivial. Yawn-inducing. Is that how you want to be remembered? Is that what YOU want to remember?
I know having the opinion that I am "wasting" my brain requires some semblance of self-confidence that I'm not quick to exude, because I often confuse confidence with arrogance, but I think the latter is more of a public display of confidence that nobody asked for, and has the ulterior motive of debasing another person, or trying to make themselves look more attractive...like those brightly colored feathers birds use to coax a mate to hop a few branches closer. And maybe that default setting of deprecation has been more of an inhibitor than a defense mechanism, or even a measure of comic relief. There's a big part of my mind that, after the sun has set and I'm left with mostly my thoughts, comes to conclusion that I have gotten exactly what I deserve. That is accurate, and also so fucking short-selling that if someone I knew said those words to me, I'd probably slap them in the face. What I should be telling myself is that I have gotten exactly what I earned...but I want more. So, I have to earn more, and that requires action, or destruction, or change, or maybe all three. That is not something I can do sitting on the couch, or out having dinner with a girlfriend, or even while typing these words. I'm not suggesting nobody can, but I know I can't. Of the few certainties I own, that's one of them.
This post is concluding as sort of a series finale, which wasn't my intention. I'm closing a book, and maybe ripping out some pages and setting them on fire, but I don't know any other way to work on the sequel.
Of course, I'm ending on a metaphor. Or words I didn't write.
In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people
march:
"Where to? What next?"
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