Recently, I sent a batch of cookies to a college chum of mine who had recently retired from the NYC police force. I have been in baking mode since the weather turned and I've had to pull out my layering sweaters. Peanut butter chocolate chip are my favorites, but I've pulled out some scrumptious cream cheese filled pumpkin cookies, pumpkin whoopie pies, and recently baked my mother's ginger snap cookies to perfection. That cookie has eluded me for some time. I have so much flour from the first waves of the quarantine as I, like everyone else, was baking up a storm. Spelt, millet, rice, coconut, almond flour and organic white flour milled in California and sent across the country from my friend Nancy who works at the Santa Cruz farmer's market. A text beeped from Dave: "Why aren't you married? These cookies are insane!"
This is not the first time I've heard this question, and please, if you know the answer, I'd love to hear it. I've been through the gamut of thinking and meditating about it. At first, I thought I had cursed myself, claiming at a young age that I was going to be like Auntie Mame and be fabulously single until my older years when I'd find the love of my life, but sadly, my two nieces and nephew were either not allowed or not interested in having a relationship with their jetsetting Aunt.
Maybe I've picked the wrong men. Well, not maybe... I HAVE picked the wrong men, 100% all of whom have issues with addictions, lingering resentments or commitment or all three. Over the past years that I've lived on the Outer Cape, I've had to reconcile this singleness. I jokingly call it "no man land".
I don't think anyone, with the exception of my ex, (the California soccer hottie start up guy) wants to be single. "I think I'm a life long bachelor" he told me the last time we broke up. I think people want to share lives together, if not live together. Especially now, when we are in our homes or clenching our teeth with the uncertainty, of our jobs, our planet, humanity. I think about that line from "Our Town" where Mrs. Gibbs says, "People are meant to go through life two by two. ’Tain’t natural to be lonesome."
Yes, I could join dating sites. I recently was told about an app called "Mindful" for people looking for companions who share the concept of "mindfulness", which to me translates into being present, practicing yoga, honoring the environment and different people. The friend who recommended it to me was in thrall with someone from Northern California she had met through Mindful and spent most of the quarantine zooming or talking for hours on the phone with him, finally culminating in a chaste, yet romantic, weekend together only to have him ghost her, a relationship phenomenon (and truly terrible manners) that has spilled over to Generation W and X. This has happened to me too - in this incredibly small town. Disbelief and incredible sadness spread through me when the person I was sleeping with, who I shared so much in common that when I first went to his house for a dinner date, I gasped in surprise at the amount of similar books we both owned, drove right by me and didn't stop to say "hello". Imagine me driving past him on route six, the one road connecting our Outer Cape towns, or even our small Main Street, and watch him stare straight ahead, pretending he didn't see me in my singular bright green (kiwi it's called) Honda Element. It was awful.
I suppose I was inspired to write about this singlehoodness again after a phone call last night that made me want to disappear. A phone call that I can't even remember the context of upon waking up and writing this. That despite my gratitude and my job security right now, disappearing feels like a viable option.
HALT, you say. Hungry Angry Lonely Tired ... that's it! Lonely! And you'd be right. I am lonely. I never wanted this for myself. I never wanted to be a "spinster" as I was forced to sign on the deed of my first house on Poppy Peak in L.A. I didn't want to see the man who had broken my heart, cracked it wide open, get married following our break up and have the audacity to move to my neighborhood. It's not that I don't wish them happiness, of course I do, it's just that ... well... why I am the one that is still alone? People presume that you get what you need or what you can handle. I can handle a LOT, I know that about myself, but that doesn't mean I necessarily enjoy it.
God, if I'm supposed to walk this earth alone, I want a superpower! This is what I jokingly tell the other single women in my life who find themselves in this strange mid-life predicament, now wondering, how does the next twenty or thirty years of my life look? Will someone be sharing that aging experience with me? Because although I feel youthful, I am aging, and it would be nice to share that burden and joy with someone.
