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030807
Ever so often, my life takes on a quality that can best be described as parenthetical-where it seems that while my current thoughts and activities, when looked back on from some great (as of now inconceivable) age, may add a certain footnoted quality to my life as a whole, they are overall best forgotten. When I'm trapped inside the parentheses, as I am now, all seems hopeless and listless and dull. Everything is scary. Getting through the day is simply a means of finding the most creative way to waste time. Life becomes, quite simply, dolorous.
I was standing in Target today, in the health and beauty aisles. They have a special line of cosmetics that I have recently decided will change my life if I buy all of them. So there I was, surrounded by all of these well-packaged boxes and bottles and vials, all promising amazing things if I just take them home and follow the directions. The fluorescent lights were beating down. And suddenly, it occurred to me: I'm lost. I look like a dowdy 40 year old and I'm shopping for miracles at Target and I'm lost.
These past several weeks I've felt as if I'm barely hovering over the surface of my own life, having conversations, taking the train, reading anything from self-help to Henry James, but nothing seems to hold my ankles in place quite firmly enough; I float away. My mind wanders. For the first time in a long time, I'm realizing that I don't know what's next.
The worst of it is, I don't have being single to blame these feelings on anymore. So many times I have tricked myself into believing that, if I was loved, really really loved, everything would be different and better. I would blossom and bloom like a well-kept houseplant, tended by the love of a good man. The unfortunate truth, however, is that I was wrong.
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