If you ask the universe, “Universe, offer it up to me,” then, in turn, do you have to accept what is offered?
If you ask the universe, “Is my hair too poufy?” and a gust of wind comes along and blows it in your face, is the answer “yes”? And then, in turn, does that mean you have to do any damn thing about it?
I have become pretty close with loneliness, these past forty some years of my life. You wouldn’t know it, from my poufy hair and my yogic patience and my smile. Because I’m not unhappy. But I am lonely. So lonely in fact that I just paid 7o something dollars to get on match.com and say “universe, offer it up to me,” and the universe says, “this is all I got on a Thursday.” Because, I’m not so lonely I just want the company of anybody. Hell, no! I would rather be alone than be with my boyfriend, X, whose rages made me forever wonder if this was the one time he would break and throw me across the room. I’d even rather be alone than be adored in such a way that, like with my boyfriend Y, he forgot who he was in the process of trying to become the thing he thought would appeal to me. Ironically, and sadly for him, that was most unappealing. I’d rather be alone than be with my boyfriend, Z, who had the body of a male stripper and the good heart of the little drummer boy, but liked to sit with the TV on and we had not a one true thing to talk about.
So I’m like, “Universe, what is it you want me to learn about loneliness? Do you want me to offer it in? Because here I am on Christmas, alone in a bed in a house with a cat and two dogs. Pretty damn lonely but not as lonely as many other folks. Do you want me to settle, Universe? Should I just say ‘to heck with his womanly obese body and halitosis, I need a buddy?’ Because I don’t want to do that, Universe, but you aren’t giving me the bestest options here.”
Today in the car I told my daughter that I loved mermaids. She is in an obstinate phase, that apparently is lasting her entire childhood.
“There is nothing special about mermaids, mom. They are just women with fish tails. Literally. There is nothing great about that.”
“That is so not true!” I say. “Mermaids are archetypal and mythic and in the Odyssey and Splash!”
“Mermaids kill people.”
“That is not their fault! They are not accountable! Just because they are beautiful and alluring and their voices cause sailors to crash on the rocks, whose fault is that?”
“Totally their fault! They are selfish, and jealous, and when they are jealous, they drown people.”
“Well, I guess I don’t want to be like a mermaid anymore then, if this is how the world sees them.”
I don’t want to be a mermaid anymore. Who cares to have a string of boyfriends if they are just going to crash on the rocks, unwittingly, poor bastards? What good is a string of broken hearts to me?
I meet so many lonely hearts. They are sitting in coffee shops, blogging or programming or face booking while the world swims around them. Someday, I swear, touching someone else, fingertip to fingertip, is going to be too intimate for us. We will have sex with screens between us. A look into someone’s non-virtual eye will give us an orgasm. Okay, now I’m rambling.
My point here is, Universe, I want a non-virtual way to be amongst people and I want to not be lonely. Not on a Thursday or a Tuesday. Really really not on Christmas. Not on match.com or WordPress. I want a person in the other room, on the couch, who is not a burglar, who will make me pancakes in the morning and go for a run and come back and kiss me on the way out the door and not worship me and not steal from me and not terrify me and break my heart only once a month. Universe, I’m going to get a little more specific with you. So I hope you are ready for that. Goodnight.
itsagreatstory 