march 28th

Yesterday, I almost spent the whole day alone.  In my pajamas.

Breakfast, reading, old episodes of that 70s show, nap, reading, more TV. It was about halfway through the UNC basketball game that I realized no one was coming home and if I wanted any kind of human connection that day I was going to have to go out and find it.  And while I found the notion of leaving the couch, hell even leaving my pajamas, to be mentally exhausting and intimidating, I found the vision of another night spent alone even more frightening.   In the end, I was glad I went out.  It took real effort and started off slowly, but brought acute awareness of the blessing of having someplace to escape to when confronted by those feelings.  A group of friends, gathered to watch the game, called out warm greetings to my second-half presence (most of them, anyway).

After a bit of post-basketball hangout and a quick game of Infinite City, I headed back home, happy to be in bed with teeth brushed, face washed and newly laundered PJs by 10:00.  What to do with the bounty of alone time before my usual bedtime of 10:30?   No longer feeling it oppressive, but instead filled with opportunity to read, edit photos, surf the web - whatever.   But another possibility occurred to me.  I longed to pick up the phone, to have yet one more connection before day's end.  To further reinforce feelings of excitement and anticipation.  To substitute for having someone there to snuggle with at night (easily one of the things us single people miss most) with a sort of mental snuggle.  A flooding of blood, emotion, and warmth to last me through the night. Get the synapses crackling, the laugh lines crinkling, the heart beating just a little bit quicker.  But I hesitated.

Perennially, I find myself an excitable person.  By ideas, by connections, by competition.  I live life with a lot of passion.   I allow myself to experience uninhibited emotions - of joy, sadness - even anger gets its turn from time to time.  People have reacted to this quality in a lot of different ways over my 27 years, and not all of them positive.  Increasingly, as people my age "mature" and start to follow some societally dictated imperative to place value on steadiness and routine, more and more of them seem unnerved by and wary of the fervor I display. It's a longer post for a longer session of introspection, but I believe it explains my hesitation.  A few negative reactions to my energy level have made me gunshy of displaying too much excitement, at times.

So I didn't call.  I went to bed early, warming myself instead with dreams of roads less traveled, and awoke to the irony of my hesitation.  And I just thought you should know, even though it's a little too late to be helpful, last night there was a little bit of thumping in my soul.