I took a walk today, and I saw a dead dog. On the sidewalk.
Lying stiffly in a pool of blood.
And I had no one to tell it to!
I could probably just stop writing right there, and this
would be enough to justify my blog post, but instead I will keep going. Because
I’m living alone for the first time in…well…forever, and I just need to tell
someone something. Anything. But since that would be boring, I’ve opted for
telling you all about moving and being alone, which I have optimistically
re-named, “Being with Yourself.”
Hmmm….that could sound dirty. But you know what I mean.
Being by yourself implicitly suggests
the aloneness of the endeavor. Being with
yourself suggests that you are your own best friend, boon companion,
onlooker, mutual friend, etc.
I’m still working on that part…
I have never lived on my own; after I left home, I had
roommates throughout college and afterwards, in that strange period of time
when you are Becoming an Adult, also known as the show “Girls,” I also always
lived with others. Even if I didn’t talk to them very often, there was always a
Presence there to speak to. Though there were times when even roommates did not
seem like enough. Living on my own again reminds me of the times when I lived
with roommates who had their own lives, leaving me frequently at home to fend
for myself, which often ended in listening compulsively to Dido and Coldplay
and bemoaning my post-college aloneness.
For the last six years, however, I have had a constant
companion in the form of my wife and best friend, K. For the last six years, in
fact, we have barely been apart (not in a creepy way…but with a touch of
co-dependence, I will admit). Three weeks apart when I traveled to visit
relatives abroad? That last week was always so painful and drawn out! And now
here we are, living apart, 1200 miles apart, in fact, and though it could be
worse (we are, at least, in the same time zone and on the same continent and
country), it feels strange to be missing that ever-present witness to my
everyday, humdrum existence.
It doesn’t help that I am also currently adjusting to
living in a new place, in a new state, with a new job. I moved last year and
that seemed like quite the move, but moving with
someone, it turns out, is quite preferable to moving alone. I mean, with
only myself. (Think positive! or is it “Think positively!”?) Even when you know
no one, you still have that person who is required, by law and love, to
accompany you as you get lost in new neighborhoods, go to bad restaurants, and
get stared at by the locals who, through some kind of 6th sense,
innately know you don’t belong.
The last time I moved somewhere totally new and was
totally on my own was when I moved to New York City for my MA. I, somewhat
naively and mistakenly, believed that since I was going to school and living in
Brooklyn, I would automatically make fast friends with everyone else in my
program. NYC is, however, a heartless mistress; people move there with friends
or they go to school there, they stay, set up networks, and then get so
entangled in them that they find little time for newcomers. It’s an insular
world, and, while I enjoyed certain aspects of life in the City, it never felt
like home. When I packed up and moved to Long Island, it was with a certain
relief: here were trees! clean air! and, luckily for me, other desperate,
lonely phd students who were eager to make friends—like I was.
Many people have written about how it’s harder to make
good friends the older that you get. I’m not sure that is true; sometimes I
think it depends on where you are and what you do. Between academia, which
attracts certain kinds of lonely intellectuals, the outcasts growing up who are
constantly searching for friends who understand the lifestyle, and roller
derby, which is centered around bonding and friendship in addition to
sportsmanship, it was fairly easy to adjust to life in Tennessee.
Here in Texas, however, I feel, at the moment, adrift in
space. I check Facebook addictively to see who else is out there, online,
feeding off the meager energy of virtual life. If I put something online, then
it exists; if I don’t, then, it would seem, it doesn’t. I know that with time,
I will meet more people, make friends, get settled. I don’t doubt that. But how
can I come to terms with being with myself, all the time, without being just
lonely?
And who am I supposed to turn to when I see a dead dog on
the sidewalk?
