I recall solving the biggest problems of my life alone
Losing school books in 2nd grade. Not getting invited to parties in 9th grade where the cool kids made out and maybe smoked cigarettes. Building my first business as my mentor and friend John suffered three heart attacks and renal failure. Selling that business. The death of my father (with Lois). My brother's homelessness (I'm sorry I haven't been better). The loss of my world class pets Springer and Hercules and Emily. The sadness of falling in love with my current pet Ceci, and both of us knowing it's only the two of us (she lost her kittens before I met her). My own recent PTSD and depression as I learned that I had built a life with the wrong people, and needed to learn to protect myself with very tight boundaries or I would continue to be in pain forever
Self-sufficiency is a habit. It’s a neural default. This is the third time in my life I’m living alone during a crisis, but looking back to my family and my marriages, in the end I was always solving in solitude even when sharing home with others. I was always the “best baby in the world,” (a quote from my mom the day she discovered she was pregnant.) which meant always pleasing and never asking for help. That was my family constellation and my contract. Both more or less worked until I ran into a partner who I could never please. My life partner. My ex.
I have been on a life of solo redeye flights, trying to get back quickly to love with and from her that did not exist. Most recently, she appears to have been overtly disinterested in me, or even hostile to my "silly" needs. This is the basis of my depression—the looming truth that I'm still that plucky lonely competent little five year old man. I send that boy love and sympathy every day. Sometimes I get reciprocal responses back to my current 69 year old soul.
Now I live alone. I help my remaining friends in small ways when I can. I'm a good listener and I'm still curious about others—what makes them happy or sad or confident or upset. I have a few spare bedrooms for friends who need a place to settle with healthy food and no demands from me. I've bought emergency plane tickets for friends in need, and I don't judge.
Many of my favorite memories have been lost because I have come to understand that I knew very little about my partner. She was my only family for so long but she too was alone and elsewhere. Trying to succeed and feel meaningful in her own ways that I likely got wrong (my mistakes were amplified beyond recognition by her regular entitled decisions to ghost me).
This is an opportunity to live alone for the first time, and as a result, to be able to trust the person I live with. Me. I trust me, as sad and broken and lonely and awkward and slow as I now am. I love that person and hope to accept him. I still have a great large heart and the soul of an empath. These are things that I value in myself and others, and things that were not valued in my marriage or from my NYC tribe.
Self-sufficiency is a habit. It’s a neural default. This is the third time in my life I’m living alone during a crisis, but looking back to my family and my marriages, in the end I was always solving in solitude even when sharing home with others. I was always the “best baby in the world,” (a quote from my mom the day she discovered she was pregnant.) which meant always pleasing and never asking for help. That was my family constellation and my contract. Both more or less worked until I ran into a partner who I could never please. My life partner. My ex.
I have been on a life of solo redeye flights, trying to get back quickly to love with and from her that did not exist. Most recently, she appears to have been overtly disinterested in me, or even hostile to my "silly" needs. This is the basis of my depression—the looming truth that I'm still that plucky lonely competent little five year old man. I send that boy love and sympathy every day. Sometimes I get reciprocal responses back to my current 69 year old soul.
Now I live alone. I help my remaining friends in small ways when I can. I'm a good listener and I'm still curious about others—what makes them happy or sad or confident or upset. I have a few spare bedrooms for friends who need a place to settle with healthy food and no demands from me. I've bought emergency plane tickets for friends in need, and I don't judge.
Many of my favorite memories have been lost because I have come to understand that I knew very little about my partner. She was my only family for so long but she too was alone and elsewhere. Trying to succeed and feel meaningful in her own ways that I likely got wrong (my mistakes were amplified beyond recognition by her regular entitled decisions to ghost me).
This is an opportunity to live alone for the first time, and as a result, to be able to trust the person I live with. Me. I trust me, as sad and broken and lonely and awkward and slow as I now am. I love that person and hope to accept him. I still have a great large heart and the soul of an empath. These are things that I value in myself and others, and things that were not valued in my marriage or from my NYC tribe.
I know the fact that, in a recent post she wrote, she mentions that she valued some experiences together feels unusual, and nice! Of course I’ve assumed that she was more or less plotting against me the whole time. So I’ll enjoy the small feel good moment.
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