When I was working on my portfolio, the exit mechanism in lieu of a Master's thesis (and much more difficult, I must say!) for the MA program I just completed, I fell sleep at my desk one day, with one hand on my computer. After that, I got the brilliant idea of doing my work sitting on my bed - then, if I fell asleep, I'd be in the right place. Since then, it's become a habit. The computer sleeps on one side of the bed, and I sleep on the other. My printer and scanner are set up beside my bed.
A friend of mine says that bedrooms should only be for sleeping and sex, and that I shouldn't even have the TV in here. Not only is the TV in here, but the cable box is, too, as I have TV5 (the French station), and I want to be able to watch it and HBO without having to uproot myself and go all the way into the living room!!! And, besides, my bedroom wouldn't be living up to its purposes if I went by what that friend of mine says, and I'd hate to waste such a nice room on just sleeping!!!
After I graduated, I was writing, and then I doing the ETS thing, until I had to send my pretty baby VAIO to San Diego to not be repaired. So, the computer set up in the bedroom has stayed. I like working in here. I would set it all up elsewhere if I were living with someone, or sharing my bed(room) or whatever, but, since I am not, it's convenient and it takes up space in the bed... The electronics keep me company, anyway!
So, especially when doing jobs that have me telecommuting (regular commuting to New Jersey would be a bit rough!), I spend a lot of time in my bedroom. At least it has a great view over the dune and the bay. But between working from home and generally isolating myself, I tend not to meet too many new people.
I've dated a few people, and they've been alright, but I have found that I am no longer willing to compromise as far as a lot of men's BS is concerned anymore. And a LOT of men are FULL of BS! So I wind up tiring of them, or being bored, or they tire of me. I just don't want to play the games anymore. There's not enough life in anybody's life to waste time on games as far as I'm concerned. A couple of them and I have become friends, though, and that's nice.
I have some great friends I have met in the times when I venture out of my bedroom, but I have really been isolating myself since my Mom died. I don't want to have to put on a front for anybody, to play any games, or to put up with other people's crap - if it's legitimate stuff, that's different, that's what friends are for, but if it's crap, it's crap, and I have neither the time nor the inclination to tolerate crap anymore. From anybody.
I was seeing a counselor for a while before my Mom died, and I am going to go back. She encouraged me to go out, and I know she's right. Because, it does help to have people to care about and all of that, and they don't tend to go knock on random bedroom doors looking for friends and companionship!!
Sometimes, I bet it would be nice to have somebody here waiting for when I come home, besides Morgan. Although she's the greatest daughter in the world, she has her own life to lead. In my heart, I don't believe that anybody would really prefer to be alone.
Now, I would rather be by myself than be with someone who is not respectful, intelligent, etc. But I would rather be with someone, the right someone, than alone.
I didn't really care for my mother's husband from the get-go, but over time, especially between her breast cancer and then the ALS, I came to respect and appreciate him. He did, or does, truly, love my mother. He took care of her. And she, him. She deserved that after putting up with bullshit for all those years. Alcoholism, and physical and mental/emotional abuse destroy so many lives. I am glad she found someone who truly cared for and about her, even if I didn't get along with him so well.
That's what I want. Someone who I love, and who loves me; who I can share things, anything, with, and who is intelligent enough to understand them; someone who understands the intricate relationship between being involved with someone and letting them be themselves at the same time. And, if I can't have that, if I have to compromise what is really important to me, then I would rather be alone. Since I wouldn't rather be alone forever, I hold on to the belief that there is such a man out there, but that I either haven't met him, or something...
I hate to say this, but what I am talking about is what Ronald and Nancy Reagan had. I hated him as a person, in general, although I still believe he was actually a hologram, as a politician and as a president, or non-president. But, apparently, he was good husband and he and Nancy truly loved one another. That is what I want to have someday.
At times I think that men are afraid of me, or afraid that there is something between us that neither one of us is brave or strong enough to acknowledge. Sometimes I tell myself that I am full of shit and imagining that there is something where there really is nothing. Every time I think I am figuring things out, the guy disappears, or leaves the country, or stops calling and writing, or whatever. And sometimes I do it. Over the years, I have come to know certain people, certain men who are, or at least represent, pretty much the kind of person I think would be a good person to be with. But then I tell myself that, since (a) that hasn't happened, (b) they haven't expressed any such interest, and (c) I haven't found the right combination of traits in any man, maybe I am wrong, or asking too much, or something.
A wise old (well she's not old, she's just been my friend for a long time) friend of mine says that, in these things, you need to know what few characteristics are most important, the "deal breakers," if you will, and ignore the rest. I think she's on to something there.
But, it seems to me that men, in general, seem to be afraid of something. I think that many, many of them are afraid of children. But, with me, that isn't an issue, since I have had all of the children I am going to have. But I still think that most men are afraid of something that women aren't afraid of. Maybe it goes back to the hunter-gatherer, roving protector, thing, or a need to propagate the species and not be stuck with one person. Maybe its a fear of showing their weakness or vulnerability. Maybe it was in acknowledging that fear that FDR talked about there being nothing to fear but fear itself. I know he was talking about Pearl Harbor at the time, but I think that he was onto something. Could that be the fundamental difference between men and women? Could it be that we are all afraid, but that women deal with their fear in one way, and men do other things, being afraid to acknowledge the fear, embrace it and accept it as part of who they are?
This may sound sappy, but I'm serious. I think that might be the difference. Not that either gender does any better than the other. But fear is a powerful motivator, and being able to deal with it could well be the key to how we live our lives. So maybe women tend to live with their fear on their sleeve, and men tend to live fearing their fear.
Have you ever read "Tuesdays with Morrie?" I can't read it anymore. Not now. Morrie had ALS, and it all hits too close to home. But, one of Morrie's lessons to Mitch Albom was that, instead of avoiding your feelings, instead of hiding your fear, in order to truly live your life, you have to face each emotion, embrace it, feel it, and come through it, having fully experienced it, good or bad, in order to live a full life.
"Take any emotion--love for a woman, or grief for a loved one, or [...] fear and pain from a deadly illness. If you hold back on the emotions--if you don't allow yourself to go all the way through them--you can never get to being detached, you're too busy being afraid. You're afraid of the pain, you're afraid of the grief. You're afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails." Another is that "dying is only one thing to be sad over [...]. Living unhappily is something else." Or that, "the culture we have does not make people feel good about themselves. And you have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn't work, don't buy it. [...] So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they're busy doing things they think are important. That is because they are chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning."
I think he might have been right. He (Albom) ended the book with these thoughts:
I look back sometimes at the person I was before I rediscovered my old professor. I want to talk to that person. I want to tell him what to look out for, what mistakes to avoid. I want to tell him to be more open, to ignore the lure of advertised values, to pay attention when your loved ones are speaking, as if it were the last time you might hear them.
Mostly I want to tell that person to get on an airplane and visit a gentle old man in West Newton, Massachisetts, sooner rather than later, before that old man gets sick and loses his ability to dance.
I know I cannot do this. None of us can undo what we've done, or relive a life already recorded. But if Professor Morris Schwartz taught me anything at all, it was this: there is no such thing as "too late" in life. He was changing until the day he said goodbye.
Albom has another book, "The 5 People You Meet in Heaven," and the lessons it teaches are so dead-on as to be frightening in their own way. It's the story of a man, Eddie, who dies trying to save a little girl from a falling piece of Ferris wheel (I think it's a Ferris wheel) at an amusement park on the shore of CA. I like to imagine it as the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, but who knows!! This book begins by stating the truth that "all endings are also beginnings[,] we just don't know it at the time." In "Heaven," Eddie meets 5 people who had influenced his life in one way or another. Each of those people had a message or lesson for Eddie to learn:
(1) "There are no random acts. that we are all connected. That you can no more separate one life from another than you can separate a breeze from the wind. [... That] fairness does not govern life and death. [... and that] No life is a waste. the only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone."
(2) In "Heaven," "you get to make sense of your yesterdays." And that we all make sacrifices, that "sacrifice is a part of life. It's supposed to be. It's not something to regret. It's something to aspire to. [...} Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it. You're just passing it onto someone else."
(3) "Silence is rarely a refuge. [...] thoughts still [haunt you.]" And, "holding anger is a poison. It eats you from the inside. [...] in order to move on, you must understand why you felt what you did, and why you no longer need to feel it. [...] You need to forgive [...].
(4) "Love, like rain, can nourish from above, drenching couples with a soaking joy. But sometimes, under the angry heat of life, love dries on the surface and must nourish from below, tending to its roots, keeping itself alive." And that "lost love is still love [...]. It takes a different form, that's all. You can't see their smile or bring them food or tousle their hair or move them around on a dance floor. But when those senses weaken, another heightens. Memory. Memory becomes your partner. You nurture it. You hold it. You dance with it. Life has to end. Love doesn't."
(5) Whether we know it or not, we all do something. None of us is nothing. We all accomplish something, and we are all supposed to be here. And, "each affects the other and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one."
A person to share life with would be even nicer. I don't want to be like my uncle, after all.
My father's brother passed away this past spring. His was a wasted life, if there is such a thing. His entire being for 45 of his 58 years was both consumed and defined by alcohol. He was deported back to France in 1964 because of criminal activity while drunk. His first marriage failed because he drank too much to keep his job as a truck driver and never got another, so he drank more. One of my cousins followed suit, tried to drink himself out of depression, and then chose to drive his motorcycle into a bridge abutment instead of living anymore.
My uncle lived in a house my father owns. His only "friends" were drinking buddies. His second wife had died of cancer. He himself had throat and lung cancer. But he kept drinking anyway, after all, alcohol doesn't cause lung or throat cancer. He claimed the alcohol would kill the cancer cells.
Just like my father's father, who would take his diabetes medicine at breakfast, with a glass or two or five of wine.
One day, my uncle decided to take a bath. They found a bathtub full of clean (or at least unused!) water. He must have felt unwell, went to sit on his bed, and died there, naked, alone, on his bed.
Nobody noticed.
Two or three weeks later, a bar buddy realized he hadn't been seen in a while. He went to City Hall (don't ask me why he chose City Hall). "They" went to the house, put a ladder up to the windows, and didn't see anything. Then one of them glimpsed something out of the corner of his eye, so they looked again. They broke into the house. My uncle had lain there, alone, naked, dead, for 2 to 3 weeks, before anybody even realized he was missing.
I would rather be like my mother, living, loving, and feeling my feelings, in her own obsessive-compulsive way, than like my uncle, fearing his own fear, drinking to drown it, and dying alone.
My mother loved Pope John Paul II, and had adopted his habit of telling people to "be not afraid," from the Bible. The day my mother died, their parish priest was visiting. As he got up to leave, he sensed something ws happening in her, turned around, and went back to her, as if to stay, after all. My mother, who could no longer speak, looked at him. He could see in her eyes that she knew her time had come. I'm sure she was glad, as she'd wanted it to be done for a while. She was tired. She wanted an audience with John Paul II. She wanted to be freed from the prison her body had become. She could see in the priest's eyes that he knew that she knew. He offered to stay. She spelled out in the air (even though she had a machine that would speak whatever she typed) "Be not afraid." The priest said goodbye and left. Within 15 minutes, she was dead.
I think that's it, it's fear. That's what motivates us. That's what keeps us in relationships that are unhealthy. That's what keeps us from being with the ones we love, or from letting them know we love them. That's what keeps the mass of men leading their lives of quiet desperation.
I don't want to do that. I want to live my life, help others, and do the things that interest me, with someone, a companion, who lives his life, shares with me, and does the things that interest him, with or without me. And no matter what, without fearing fear.
