Alone

The house is empty tonight. Zac is singing in church choir and spending the night at my parents' house. The cat is in bed with me, grooming herself, and the dog is at the foot of the bed, looking grateful that she's sleeping outside of the crate. KGII is doing something unknown to me.

I'm feeling monumentally alone tonight, like I do almost every night that I don't have Zac. I'm not sure what I'd do with myself without my son. In recent years, he's become an anchor to reality. Like, yes, I have to wake up every morning and get him ready for school. And, yes, I have to stay awake long enough at night to supervise bath time and make sure he brushes his teeth. He grounds me in both small and meaningful ways.

The fact that I'm alone at the age of 31 (soon to be 32 in December) I consider my second greatest failing as an adult. The first, of course, would be the depression and the resultant suicidality. Nothing can or will ever top that in all-time greatest failures. But being alone comes in a close second. Perhaps my mind is skewed because I live in Texas, where, at the age of 24 with a newborn son, I found myself in the divorcee dating pool. People marry early and often in Texas. I can clearly remember going out with a 28 year-old man that had been married and divorced twice. In his defense, the second time was a stripper and I'm told it didn't count, but that's besides the point.

I've always wished that I could be one of those people who wholeheartedly embrace being alone. Like, "I am complete. I want for nothing. I enjoy my own solitude" and it's funny because I've always thought that I was that type of person. View me joining the Forest Service in rural Idaho then a mere two years later joining Peace Corps and moving to an even more rural village in Mongolia. I thought I was a woman of letters in the classic 19th century sense. I had my books, I had a journal, and I had letters to friends. It's only as I've aged that I've realized I crave connection with adults. Somehow that connection slips through my fingers every time I reach my hand out to grasp for it.

For someone that starts to feel profoundly depressed when left alone for too long, you would think by now that I would have developed better coping skills to meet and retain friends and lovers. If building relationships were this vital to my existence - what I might even argue keeps me alive and breathing - that I might somehow glean enough knowledge to figure out where I'm going wrong. But that's the problem with relationships, you can't study them like a formula and you can't read enough self-help books to make them make sense. If years spent in therapy equaled number of successful relationships, I ought to be worth my weight in gold. But I'm not.

Adding love into the mix just makes the whole equation (which is not really an equation. If it was an equation, I would be able to figure it out. This is more like an unforeseen act of nature) that much more complex. This is what I know to be true: I've never been married. I've never been engaged. I just recently started wearing a ring and it feels ridiculous on me because I have to go to the bathroom so much and wash my hands so frequently. I consider a long-term relationship to be one that lasts more than six months. I am just as talented as pushing someone away as I am being pushed away. I tend to overwhelm people. I don't know how to date casually. At some point in my existence between being a 20 year-old and turning into a 30 year-old, sex started to matter and now I'm one of those people who would rather go without than do it meaninglessly.

I'm also an insufferable bitch. Some women would blame that on their pregnancy, but I actually think pregnancy just brings out some of the more latent character flaws in a woman's personality. I don't blame people for not wanting to date me or live with me. Their rejection just reinforces what I've always felt about myself deep down inside. I don't want to live with me most days.

So I type, alone. I'm swimming against the vortex of self pity, doubt, and depression, but I get tired sometimes. Sometimes I just want a safe harbor. Sometimes that's hard to find, alone.