"No one can tell what I lack."
That's the title of a chapter in one of my favorite books, Red Comet by Heather Clark.
The first time I came across that chapter, I read it as "no one can tell ME what I lack." I guess my mind slants towards defensive language even when I'm curled up on the couch reading something amazing.
Point being:
I had "a moment" right after Christmas. It was the evening of the 26th; I was due back at work the 27th. My house was cold and quiet until the air conditioner started its nightly rattling and humming session.
For whatever reason, the transition from empty silence to AC crankiness invited in my "default" horrifying thought loop: "I have 2 immediate family members in Texas. Only one of them is verbal. Statistically I will outlive them both."
Obviously I opted out of a family. I don't want hustle and bustle, purple medicine spit in my face, someone hogging the covers. All I want is the freedom to pursue writing without other people bleeding into me. Yet comments have been made about me and to me over the years.... which prod me with that secret fear that all of this is sublimation.
Writers have a simple assignment: Tell the truth even when making stuff up. I have to machete through all of the distortions to try to determine what’s really happening to me, the people in my orbit, and society at large. Transcribing and decoding takes up most of my life. It can be isolating.
Whatever talent I do have hasn’t made me happier, it’s just something I have to do. Another reason I spend so much of my life in this is because there are (secretly) some everyday things that are comepletely lost on me....
Still, I've been blessed with many wonderful friends and mentors. I know am loved. But at the beginning and end of every day it's me, Mallory Pancakes, and the air conditioner whining to me in some language I can't understand. I KNOW it's all I can tolerate, frankly. It's all I WANT to tolerate.
I spoke with a former... person of extreme significance a couple of days ago. This person is miserable. This person never learned to be alone. This person described themself to me as a "junkie without a fix" in regards to the fact that they are suddenly single.
This was once "my person." My rock. Together, we were the only things in the world that made sense. And this is us - separately - today.
I'm not "better" than this person and have my own struggles, albeit I've made tremendous progress during last couple of years. That being said... I feel that incorrect chapter reading was a fucking holy message now.
Solitary will never mean "alone" as long as I am loved.
NO ONE can tell me what I lack.
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