Always Make the Call
A Tale of Saturday Night Solo Blues
Many of you may know that I have travelled with my cat life partner, Frankie, in a cat backpack. Something I have accepted as my own New Normal. But when Amazon marketed me this backpack for TWO cats, I could not stop laughing.
Partly because they look so confused. Partly because there’s something hilarious about them being like, stacked? Like it’s a two-cat condo portable apartment? I cannot.
In other news: Suffice it to say I’m deeply, painfully lonely tonight. I was really starting to meet my edge of spirally despair when the two-cat backpack came into my awareness, and I started laughing so hard I had to share.
The aloneness is despite the fact I had places to be. Or, could have been.
Or, can still be.
The beach with my brother and his wife and kids and their friends.
Griffith Park with a monthly meet up group.
My comedy friend at the Elysian watching Kate Berlant right now invited me to the 8:40 and 10 PM shows, the latter performed by our former teacher.
But places to be does not equal the right place to be.
I’m thinking of my gorgeous poet laureate friend Brian Sonia-Wallace and his line in a poem of his we’ve talked about, that was recently published by Los Angeles Press:
(paraphrasing because I cannot find the poem right now)
“Writing about loneliness has gone out of fashion.”
When I heard him say that line out loud, my eyes squinted in indignance: Since when? Are we not all perpetually lonely? Are there not studies about loneliness as an epidemic?
Loneliness is such a norm in my life I didn’t get any memos that it wasn’t cool to talk about it any more. And I’m noticing how lonely it is to exist in so many sub-cultures.
Sick and healing - but healing with methodologies not whatsoever widely understood.
Jewish - but now mostly isolated from Jewish community
Kinky - but not having the energy to attend most of the events
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I saw a meme about people with Aquarius moons today, and how we need a small group of friends. It resonated so much that I cried and caved and called my ex-best-friend, the one from whom I’ve taken 2 months of space. It was nice to hear his voice, though the call was very brief. He’s moving, and when that’s done we we’ll meet up and see if we can repair. (Oof.)
I wonder if talking about loneliness was ever in fashion.
But I know that our lives depend on admitting when we are lonely.
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I just need one good friend who wants to wander into a murky woods together and make strange sounds.
It’s lonely being weird.
But I have to believe my people are coming.
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In the last five minutes, while writing, I got an invite to watch FAST AND FURIOUS in another friend’s ex-best-friend’s backyard. (They are also in a repair process.) I thought, oh, I could bring wine and popcorn and my LAWN CHAIR and be cozy.
But, it’s a lot of energy to be around new people and unpredictable environments.
And, I really don’t feel well.
It’s day 2 of my period and I have bad cramps, plus I’m in this monthly moment in my homeopathic healing where I take the ‘liquid remedy,’ when a lot of stuff in you moves OUT, and you can expect to get very emotional, and just have a lot come up.
It’s important to me to be selective about the energies I let into these tender moments.
That strange dance of needing people but on highly specific terms. :/
But not all is lost! I did make hot dogs again today!
This time I also made potatoes and onion and green pepper in butter with coriander.
At this point I’m lucky to have four invitations tonight.
But what I really need is to not be so alone while doing the highly specific things I need to do for my healing. Which you can’t really expect people to want to do.
Plus, there is an underlying, simmering cocktail of: rage, bitterness, resentment lately.
And I can’t repress it because we’re not repressing any more.
I just have to keep feeling and feeling and feeling it all.
I’m so fucking tired.
But guys? Hot dogs are fucking awesome. And somewhere in the world there are two cats stacked in a backpack, hopefully on a beach, carried on the back of a petite brunette with a perky ponytail and loose-fitted mid-thigh jorts with un-ironic hems.
And look at that! As soon as I wrote what I needed my comedy friend called to say she’s leaving the theater and offered to come pick me up for a glass of wine.
A singular person who is available to do exactly what I also need right now.
Someone who can meet me where I am. And I will meet her where she is.
Thank goddddddddddddddddd.
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A guy I was infatuated with said that talking to me is always high stakes, a little bit like walking a high wire at all times. I don’t really know what to make of this. I know I’m intense but I also think I can be acutely present and awake to what’s happening.
In me, or around me.
Not always both at the same time.
But I do kind of exist in a perpetual state of sharp, vigilant perceiving.
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One of the best parts of ending things with the Dom is I have completely (okay, mostly) stopped checking my insta-stories to see if he viewed them.
My therapist said I was hyper-vigilant in attempting to assess my safety with him. And I would say that no safety was able to be achieved, simply by virtue of the level of his availability. Two months of that anxious behavior behind the scenes with him really fucking exhausted me. Now I’m free to be hyper-vigilant about other things.
Like my online shopping carts! My schedule, which an Apple technician recently complimented, and said “WOW YOU ARE BUSY.”
Reader: I don’t do half the shit I put on my calendar.
But I put it there.
Color-coded.
And it comforts me.
It’s my emotional support calendar.
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Fuck, I miss the Dom. He honestly is funny. We have a call on Monday to wrap things up. I’m already sad. But, I know it’s right - at least for now. I’m open to the possibility that when we speak, a path might be paved for a new kind of relating.
But for now I am so glad I’ve put a full and complete stop to the part that felt bad.
And so proud of me. I’m actually quite brave, in a lot of ways.
And if you’re my friend, I know you are too.
All my friends are really brave people.
Life is so scary and here we are loving and chopping onions and sipping diet cokes and filling our carts and making our art and courageously making ten phone calls on a Saturday night because we know we need to spend a little time away from our cat.
Oh, and an email and a discord DM.
Because the battle for doing the mentally healthy thing is one I will never give up on.
Being alone when it’s painful and you shouldn’t be is NOT healthy.
I always make the call.
Please: always make the call.
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Next day: Comedy friend came over and we both had a lot to offer one another. For me, it was the sensitive and emotionally intimate interaction that I need, plus big belly laughs. For her, we talked about getting back into stand up after a traumatic & misogynistic experience. Normal women-in-entertainment fodder, sadly.
We split a large can of beer - well, I had a half a juice glass worth. And we walked around my neighborhood greeting many happy dogs. Honestly? I’m glad I don’t have kids. I feel like being as traumatized as I am, I never really experienced life in a healthy way. I now feel like I can savor the smallest and simplest things, which provide pleasure. Whenever I have kids, if I do, I want to feel like I have a partnership and situation where we can provide a simple life connected deeply to nature and animals, one of very calm, secure, and healthy love. Nothing else really matters to me.
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Thank you for reading, and wishing you a lovely day.
Melanie Zoey Weinstein