Strong but not balanced
It’s been a lonely summer. Not necessarily bad, not necessarily good, but lonely. Not lonely because I’ve been alone, but lonely because parts of my life have felt lonely. I don’t mind being alone, in fact, most of my Saturdays are reserved for time spent alone until the evening. I sleep in, get a coffee, take a long walk, get another coffee and then putz around the house. Sometimes I go to a park, sometimes I Facetime with my mom. If I am feeling ambitious, I’ll go surfing.
This summer I found myself having less choice for when I was and wasn’t alone though. Everyone left town and everything slowed down. I took a pay cut, meanwhile, it felt like everyone was spending their summer in Europe. The weather got hot and somehow (climate change) LA was humid.
Also, I started physical therapy.
Physical therapy has been an extremely humbling journey. Even me, the strongest woman in America, gets hurt sometimes. When people ask me what happened, I explain to them that my hip has actually been injured for three years and I just ignored it until one day, I found that I couldn’t put any pressure on my left hip when I was trying to walk. I simply had no choice but to do something about it. I guess I was hoping that my hip was just too tight and needed a good stretch in yoga – which, btw, up until about three weeks ago I hadn’t done in six years. I had been hoping for an easy fix but my physical therapist pointed out that the hip problem was linked to much bigger problems in the ways that I run and lift (swoll) and (get this) walk in general.
Every time I lose my footing and fall over while doing a hip strengthening exercise, I huff, and I puff and blow the fitness studio down. I exclaim, “I thought I was strong!” My physical therapist very gently replies, “Brittney you are very strong, you’re just not balanced.”
Strong but just not balanced. Poetic as hell tbh. Strong… but not balanced. The perfect description for my lower body strength, but also, maybe, the perfect description for my dang life.
As I was confronting the fact that I tried to ignore a physical injury into healing itself, I couldn’t help but wonder… does the way we deal with physical injuries mimic the way we deal with emotional ones? And if so, what emotional wounds am I currently avoiding in hopes they’ll dissipate before I’ll have to confront them?
I went to the beach with a newer friend this summer. Let’s call her Sarah. We packed creamy cheese, canned fish, lemons, and hard seltzer. We waded in the ocean up to our knees just deep enough to pee and then ran out from the waves to avoid the cold. Sarah told me that she has this friend who has declared she is “fully trusting the universe” with her life. Her friend was rejecting the pressure we tend to receive from ourselves and those around us, and just taking whatever the universe had to offer her with stride. Sarah told me she admired this and wondered if we should adopt that take on life. Trusting and just knowing, ultimately, we’d be dealt the right hand one day.
I envied someone who could ever trust the universe with such a task. Imagine that! I told Sarah, ya that’s cool and all, but how was I supposed to trust the universe when the times I’ve really let go of control (or my perception of control) it never works out.
And dooooo nottttttttt get on me about those times being lessons from the universe because there are reasons I haven’t gone to grad school:
1) I don’t want to spend money on it.
2) I don’t want to learn anymore! (that’s why I don’t read)
I told Sarah that I couldn’t understand why the universe would have me meet someone and have it feel so close to that thing we yearn for if it was just to be another dead end. What was the lesson in having another guy tell me they no longer wanted to see me because of “something in their gut”. All I got from that was a bruised ego and a free pair of slippers that sit in the corner of my closet.
She laughed, “Don’t you remember the night we became friends?”
Sarah and I had met a few times but didn’t really connect until one night in late spring. I was walking up to a bar where our mutual friend told us to meet and Sarah was standing outside with that mutual friend, crying. Sarah was crushed and disappointed. She’d been seeing this guy and their connection was unmatched! Then he texted her that he just wanted to be friends. She told our friend, “I can’t do it anymore.” Our mutual friend made a case for continuing onward, “He’s just some guy!”
But he wasn’t just some guy and I could see that. He was the closest Sarah had been in a long time to the kind of love we all want. It wasn’t just the sparks, the conversation, or the sex. It was seeing him and him seeing her. It was comfort and knowing and it made the whole world slow down. And his last text was just a reminder of her loneliness. Loneliness that she doesn’t really feel unless she gets so close to the thing only to have it vanish from a couple words that appear on a lock screen.
I started crying too (freak) and offered a solution, “So don’t keep doing it. At least for the time being.”
We bonded that night over feeling like you’ve met someone special, only to have them shatter your big fat ego and make you feel like you were never really it for them. I told her I hadn’t really been dating and it was refreshing. I used to have a lot of fun sharing smiles and playing get-to-know-you over a drink or two, but lately I wondered how I was supposed to enjoy that when it felt so empty compared to what I knew I could experience.
After Sarah went home that night I returned to the larger group and sat next to a man who explained to me he was newly single. Him and his ex-girlfriend broke up because he had cheated on her. He assured me it was actually her fault that he felt compelled to cheat because he was not able to love her the way she was asking to be loved. I closed out, drove myself home and blasted Taylor Swift.
Sarah reminded me of that night we met and reminded me that sometimes we can trust the universe to bring us to the people who are meant for us. If I hadn’t just had my heart broken right before hers, who knows if we’d be peeing side by side in the ocean together this summer.
This conversation about dating and disappointment has been recycled with the single women in my life this summer. And, gals, I’m a little worried! Many of us are feeling extremely satisfied with the lives we’ve created for ourselves, but pretty defeated by dating. Strong, but not balanced…. One might say.
My mom and I were on the phone the other night while I was cooking dinner. More and more, I am finding myself one Michelle Branch song away from being the lead in 2003 Rom Com, except I am stuck in the first twenty minutes where the woman is living her lonely little life, cooking dinner and Facetiming with her mom, you know, the part before she meets the person that’s going to sweep her off her feet.
I am humiliated to admit it, but no matter how much I fight the stereotype, I think I am waiting to be swept off my feet.
I asked my mom about when she met my dad and what her dating life was like before that. She told me she met my dad when she was twenty-five and never really went more than a month without a boyfriend before that. You know, the serial-monogamous type. I don’t even know how it is possible to be a serial-monogamist in LA, but I do know people have figured it out. I used to envy people who could always find a relationship until a friend of mine who is always finding herself in relationships said to me, “I’m tired of feeling lonely in relationships.” And then I realized just because you’re in a relationship, doesn’t mean you’re not lonely. Earth shattering stuff…
My mom, as moms tend to do, saw through my fishing questions. She assured me, “Brittle, you’re so young, you’ll find someone.” I told her I knew that but, you know, I also didn’t. I told her the last person who told me they loved me (romantically) was when I was twenty years old which means it’s been eight years since someone has felt that way about me (a mathematician has entered the blog). And it’s hard to not wonder… why that is exactly…
I’m not who I was when I was twenty years old (shocking), I’m someone entirely different actually. And while I love her (me) and I have friends who love her (still me), you begin to question how lovable you really are when no one has ever looked you in the eyes and told you that they love you.
All this loneliness and longing being said, I know I’m not alone in feeling all this loneliness and longing, and that really does help. I do recognize that this is one of the more exciting parts of life. Your late twenties and early-to-mid-to-late thirties are all about this kind of yearning.
The going on dates with a guy who doesn’t ask you a single question about yourself and profusely apologizes when you point that out at the end of the date. The asking the cute bartender out on a date after having just a couple drinks too many, just for him to kindly tell you he thinks you’re really cool but has a girlfriend. The absolutely psychotic sexual tension between you and the person the same age as you in the airport terminal, every time and in every city. The intimidation of going on your first date with a girl and being humbly reminded of how daunting dating can be. The meeting someone in a cemetery of all places. The disappointment when things don’t go the way you think they should go. And then, of course, the friendships that are formed because of all of it.
It’s all strong and none of it is balanced and I still get my Saturday mornings alone.