Alone

At twelve years old, I announced to my mom that someday, I would live in an apartment in a city by myself.

She looked at me skeptically and just nodded. I tended to say outrageous things like that from time to time.

She was used to me. And I think she looked at this skinny, shy twelve-year-old and thought, "Sure kid, whatever you say."

When I was 25 years old, I packed up my stuff and moved from Indianapolis, where I'd been living among friends and moved to Chicago, where I knew exactly one person.

I already had a job lined up but nowhere to live. I lived with my one friend for two or so weeks before I got that apartment by myself. It was a studio on Sheridan, three blocks from the lake. I lived on the tenth floor and had a view of the lake.

I worked three miles away at a university on Foster Avenue and for the first year, I drove to work every day, spent eight hours as an office manager and then went back to my apartment on Friday afternoon and there were some weekends where I didn't speak to anyone other than the cashier at the corner grocery store.

It was lovely.

I was never lonely.

I tried explaining to my aunt this weekend that there is a difference between aloneness and loneliness.

I come from a family full of extroverts. They all love getting together, just hanging out, being loud and silly and, well, together.

And I enjoy that too. To a point. There comes a time, though, when I long for those weekends in Chicago, when I was really and truly alone.

I'm going through something right now. I'm not sure what it is. All I know is that moving to a new house hasn't brought me some miraculous peace of mind. It hasn't given me new-found will power to watch what I eat and exercise.

It hasn't made me like myself more than I did before I moved there.

I do love the house though. I love not having to drive 65 miles one way several times a week.

I love that my girls and I get to GO HOME every single evening, leaving my mom in blissful peace (her husband works second shift, so she gets glorious ALONE time now...I'm so envious.)

My new bathroom is set up so that the mirror is facing the area just out of the shower so each time I get into or out of the shower, I am faced with my grotesque naked body.

My aunt insists that I need to reframe my thinking. She tells me to look at myself and say, "I've been through a lot. I look good for all that."

But it's not true.

I don't look good. No matter what I've been through, there is no excuse for the way I've let myself go.

And when I face myself in the mirror each morning all I feel is loathing. I disgust myself.

And I know this is affecting every aspect of my life.

How can Tom not sense this self-hatred? How can he not think, "Damn, if she feels this way about herself, maybe there's something to it? She is kind of gross..."

I don't think he ever realy thinks like that but I wouldn't blame him if he did.

I told the aunt who were promoting self-love that it's really hard to do that when you're married to a guy who is 50 years old but looks 30 and you're almost 40 years old and look 50.

Now...honestly, I don't think I look 50 years old. But I absolutely don't look 30. Or if I do? I look like a gigantic blog of a 30-year-old.

I know...this is all so self-defeating. I need to get of my huge butt and run. I need to go for a walk in the sun and soak up some vitamin D and melatonin (right?) I also need to get over myself.

I need to suck it up, decide what I want to change and just do it instead whining about it constantly bitching and moaning.

And yet...I'm tired. I need to work on unpacking the house. I need to get the girls' closets organized. I want to get the 'toy' room organized. I want to paint the walls before we get tons of furniture in the house.

There's so much to do and all I want to do is go home, put pajamas on myself and the girls, make some kind of dinner we'll all eat without tears (thank you, Alyssa, for crying over the green beans last night, that was quite pleasant), watch a few episodes of Star Trek: Voyager and then go to sleep.

Yeah, that'll make for a productive evening.