The Great Adventure

Hello from my sofa.

I am here sitting comfortably with a tea and fresh mango.

God I look so perfect. I should Instagram myself.

Lulu was here a second ago, curled up at my feet, but a freaking giant fly was making so much noise I had to murder it with a towel, which is one of the talents I learned from from my grandma who was a real kitchen warrior. Skittish Lulu ran back upstairs because she couldn’t stand to see me attack another living being and now she is gone, breaking the ideal painting of this moment. 

Now that everything is quiet.

See, I make the law, here.

I never thought I’d live alone. And I love it.

Actually, now that I think about it, my grandmother the flykiller lived alone…

She had sworn off men. 

Me, I’d never do that. 

———

I have recently gone from single to less single to not single at all, and I sometimes feel like there is a great divide between single and coupled people. So before you go and imagine stuff about me, I don’t know what, but stuff, I just want you to know that I still think for myself.

I don’t talk in “we”. I tried in the past, but don’t have that talent.

My problem is that I’ve been known to lose myself in men. It’s one of the things I have to be careful about. But experience is great, isn’t it?

We learn.

So here it is : Whatever happens in my future, I would love to always have a place that’s just mine.

Have you read Virginia Woolf’s a Room of One’s Own, about the needs of a creative woman?

I think all of us are creative. 

———

Oh - no, no, no don’t worry. I am still very much in love. That’s not the subject.

The subject is that we can be in love and want to share our lives with others - but still have our own ideas about what makes us happy - and not impose them on everyone. We can even let these ideas evolve. Live together now, not later. Never live together, always live together. It took me seven hundred years to understand that, so I thought I’d save you a little time.

Even though I know after reading this, you’ll go and do the mistakes on your own. As you should. Don’t feel bad about it, I was the queen of the U-haul too. Oh we like each other? Yeah, LET’S MOVE IN!!!

———

I was talking to my friend Nora a few months ago. We were having one of these delicious lunches where one’s like “let’s get a glass of wine” with a twinkle in her eye and you say yes and you know that :

1/ The rest of your day is going to be trash.

2/ This is going to be a long good lunch where things are going to be SAID.

As opposed to these short healthy lunches where nobody talks about anything real, everybody eats the kale salad and drinks green tea and at the end you :

1/ Wonder what’s the meaning of existence.

2/ Need to go buy yourself a giant scone because you’re still hungry.

3/ YES, you’ve guessed. Hungry for food but also HUNGRY FOR MEANING. I eat scones when I am hungry for meaning okay bye. 

So. Nora.

Nora is seventy something, she is one of the coolest women I know. And I am not saying that because she is seventy. Older people don’t automatically get the cool label. It’s like kids. They’re not all adorable.

Only dogs are automatically awesome. And all noisy flies suck. 
 

... Nora. 

So she is cool, she has kids, they’re grown up now, she’s done very well and lives in a very nice house, she has a group of friends that are wonderful, and an even closer group of friends that are all women and she told me “Well, one way or another, the five of us ended up living alone, and we all love it.”

“The actual dream would be to create a compound, you know, so we could live together without living together?”

———-

WAIT, YOU MEAN THE ABSOLUTE DREAM?

I am going to let your imagination wander here because it sounds like the most wonderful thing - to live to be older and surrounded by our best women friends and have our boyfriends live not too far and let me guess here :

MY GRANDMOTHER WOULD HAVE APPROVED.

———

I mean, sure, living with someone is ALSO really cool.

I mean as long as he (or she) lets us design the house exactly the way we want. 

As long as he keeps it clean exactly the way we want.

As long as he agrees to eat the same diet as us so we don’t carbsplode.

As long as he doesn’t sno…

All right I am the one that snores, another talent I seem to have inherited from my grandma who sounded like an earthquake was happening at a rave party while a building was getting blown up in the background. I am not there yet and I intend to keep things under control, another reason not to get overweight, another reason not to follow my grandmother’s footsteps, with all due respect as Americans say when they’re being totally disrespectful.

Anyway I’ll stop here because the “as long as” list is as long as my arm, but, YEAH, living with someone, I love it!!! I do! It’s great! 

———

Makes me think.

I am just going to throw it out here, but here is a question, call it sexist if you want, maybe it’s my experience. Why are men so much more patient with our annoying little things?

My hair is EVERYWHERE, any shower I use regularly will get clogged. I eat green stuff constantly (you have to put yourself in a man’s point of view)(we think delicious, they think rabbits)(I know not all of them, there ARE guys who order the kale salad on the menu)(I’ve just never had one like that) I fall asleep at 9 and wake up at 6. I spend hours sitting on the couch on my computer, completely oblivious to the world. My beauty products take any breathing space in any bathroom...

Can you see how difficult it is for me to list my annoying sides?

That’s because NO man I’ve ever lived with has EVER reproached me for anything. 

Even the snoring! They think it’s cute!!! They’re patient!

Meanwhile, when I live with someone I spend my day making silent lists of all the shit he does wrong. It piles up for days and then I explode - usually when I am about to have my period, and after exploding I cry because the world is unfair. And I eat a giant scone.

You know why.

———

So, whatever happens in my future, I would love to always have a place that’s just mine.
 

I need these moments alone. I think we all need them? Moments where we can be nothing to anyone but ourselves. And I am not talking writing a best seller while rolling pottery while preparing a floral arrangement with Jenni Kayne.

Nothing to no one. Not productive. Potato on the couch. Reading for hours. Looking at my face with a magnifying mirror and getting terrified. Loving it. Eating soup, then chips. Re re re watching SATC. Then, maybe, writing the best seller. Or a crappy book no one will ever read.

A place where I make the law, ah.

Whatever. I. Want.

———   

When I was single, I dated a few men in whose eyes I really didn’t recognize myself.

I could feel that they had no understanding of who I was.

They didn’t have the emotional vocabulary to understand what a woman wants when she is fortyish, has no children and lives alone.

So they take the easy paved road and think : “she’s desperate."

(Oh, please. We do the same. Have you heard us say “Han, he’s a player” “Pfff, he’s a Peter Pan.” “Oh, total loser!” Yes, we're bad too... But still. The “desperate” feels like the worst. Right? Losers.)


I wish I could have found a way to tell them, hey, I am really not!

But of course instead I let their gaze destroy my self confidence and make me question my life and the shape of my butt. 

But the good news is : if a man, if any person can’t see you - don’t lose your time trying to explain. They’re just not for you. Move on. 

——— 

There is nothing less desperate than solitude, so don’t let anyone frame you.

It’s romantic to be alone. 

It’s romantic to be alone, even when you’re in love.

It’s romantic to be alone even if you have millions of friends.

It’s romantic to be alone, even when you have a loving husband and three children you adore.

It’s romantic to be alone even when you’re alone most of the time.

So, if you feel alone right now, don’t resist it, dwell in it. And remember, online dating sucks, and sucks, and sucks, until it doesn’t suck at all anymore.

If you ever felt stuck in a life situation because of your fear to be alone, just don’t. It will be hard for a minute and that will mean you have started the great adventure, the one of getting to know yourself.

And if you feel like not a second of your day is yours, then start imagining. Just do that. The room doesn’t need to be real, in the beginning. Even if, in time, I truly think it should be. My journaling is a room of my own.

——— 

And one day we realize we’re able to be with someone without having to lose ourselves.

That in solitude, we gather the treasures. Those we now can offer freely, to ourselves and to others.

In solitude we are finally ourselves.
Your self is the one thing no one can ever take away from you.

Go there. It is the richest, the bumpiest, the fullest. The Great Adventure. 





Sending you LOVE!
xG