Empty Rooms

It has been difficult to shake the despair. Although that's not quite the right word. Bleakness maybe? Tired eyes, tired body, wandering mind. A difficult combination that seems fairly persistent and if held at bay for a time, reappears with surprising alacrity.

This morning's weeping was born of realizing how much life I'm not living because I'm absenting myself from it. I am becoming increasingly more at home in what I decided to call the Empty Rooms in my mind. I alluded to this in my Alternate Life post a while back: that AltLife lives in another part of my brain I guess and there is an empty room for each version of it. For a long time, I've kept the doors to those rooms closed but increasingly I find myself sneaking in and living in them for a bit. This seems dangerous to me, and yet I keep returning, bringing in a new piece of furniture or a knick-knack with me that makes it just a little bit more comfortable.

These other rooms are of course mostly appealing because they are not This Life. And I have run out of ways to make This Life more appealing.

I did have a sweet conversation with a friend today that clarified that all is not hopeless. We realized that much of this current stage of life is spent doing things that do not make us feel good or look good while living with someone who is also spending most of his time doing things that do not make him feel good or look good. It is a Misery Multiplier, this particular formula and it only makes sense that as it multiplies day after day, the Empty Rooms become increasingly appealing because a) I feel good and look good in them and b) I'm no longer sharing my space with someone who doesn't feel good and look good.

It made me realize why the most often offered solutions (Date Night! Get Away! Exercise!) aren't such great solutions for me: they aren't things that make me (or Scott) feel better or look better, even if they should, or do for other people.

So I spent some time remembering what situations do make us feel better and look better to ourselves and to each other, and I felt a tiny bit more hopeful. Maybe we'll have a Date Night! and compare notes to see if we can make our This Life a bit more appealing now that we have a new formula to play with.

How About Later?

I was walking home from a meeting tonight and passed a young, married couple walking their dog. My initial thought was, "Oh, I miss that." But happily, I let myself think a few minutes longer and remembered that actually, being newly married wasn't so awesome either: the first year or two was getting used to being married and buying a house and the next year or two was trying to get pregnant. It's only in the looking back, that the hand-holding, dog walking looks so ideal. At the time, it felt empty and difficult and often useless.

About a car length later I realized, I'm terrible at Living In The Moment.

I think I'll think about that. Writing seems unlikely tonight, but I thought I should point this out to myself.

OK Pizza

My first thought was that they probably should have invested a bit more heavily in branding and marketing: OK Pizza doesn't instill a sense of "must try it" that a pizza joint probably needs in this competitive Tofino market. As I mull further though, maybe they're brilliant. Expectation Management is surely the key to success in any endeavour, and I bet a lot of people leave OK Pizza thinking, "Well, that wasn't so bad at all. More than OK..."

After being assailed by my alternate life fears these last few weeks, I am toeing back towards contentment in this current life of mine. Of course, being housed next to the beach, listening to the ocean and wind while my children nap helps... I walked back up from the beach carrying a sleeping Nate this morning and turned the corner to see our new Pilot sitting in the parking lot, and I thought, "Oh yeah, that's us." Seems a bit silly, but coming to peace with the Pilot is a big deal - I was sad to lose the Jetta and all that I thought it told the world about who we were. I am pretty sure that the AltLife Crisis was probably largely induced by this change. Sad but true.

Anyway, that sense of There I Am then transmogrified into Scott Is Missing And I Am Better When He's Not. Again, perhaps a surprisingly obvious truth, but one that had slipped to the background these last weeks. The grind of daily life sometimes blurs the image and I see less clearly. A bit of distance and I am reminded fairly quickly that he is my truly Other Half and in his absence I am a bit Less: Less Me, Less Quiet, Less Sure, Less At Rest.

And in the remembering of that, I come back to the Quiet, Sure, Rest that my Me is OK. Not THE WORLD'S BEST!!! or Tofino's Finest! or #1A Top Favourite! or whatever it was that AltLife was offering... We're OK. I'm okay. It's all going to be okay.

Suddenly OK Pizza sounds pretty good.


*****

Writing has always been something I've done. School, university, work... writing has always been the easy part. However, since having kids, writing has been less possible. What free time was available already had so many demands on it and frankly, writing seemed useless and unhelpful.

But these last few months, I feel like a space has opened up for it again, and I am SO thankful. It has been so sweet for my soul to unravel the threads of thought that weave through my days. Amazing. I wonder if I'll find some daily, or at least more regular, space for this discipline. In case I do, I hope one or 2 of the one or 2 who read these ramblings will suggest some starting points. I might enjoy some "assignments"...

My Alternate Life

I've become a bit obsessed with my Other Life. It's the one I'm not living because I'm so busy keeping up with the one that wakes me up every morning. I should probably say Other Lives because of course there are several alternate paths I could have chosen along the way and each would have provided its own story I suppose.

But then really, what pains me is just the One Other Life. The one where I am not me, but instead a more butterfly-like, carefree, open-hearted freedom lover, full of whimsy and je ne sais quoi and courage and an uncanny ability to live in the moment. That me wouldn't have done anything as mundane as marriage and child-bearing. Or if she had, it would have been in a barefooted, art gallery loving, bohemian way. I think she would have also died young of a tragic illness...

She wouldn't be so anxious, that's for sure. And she wouldn't ever worry about her Other Life because one of the lovelinesses of Her Life would be her trusting certainty that she was living the Right Life.

I am terrified of Her.

I am so afraid she is going to arrive one day and announce that not only is she the Other Life, she is the Only Way to True Happiness and that I will find myself forced to choose between this wrong-headed First Life with all its work and dreary-ness and commitment and everyday-ness and My Real Self Who Has Been Waiting All This Time To Be Happy.

I assume she would show up in the form of another love, a Gateway Love to that new life where all is at it should be. But she could arrive in the form of a new passion (ha! I hope Brooke reads this), or an innocent trip abroad that takes me to my Dream Home that doesn't allow children.

I know I married well because Scott listened to my tear-full confession of this fear this morning and said, "I totally know what you're talking about." And we agreed that we might well find other people with whom we would have some great moments, but that we couldn't think of anyone else we wanted nearby for the shitty ones. When I am diagnosed with my tragic illness, it may be romantically lovely to gaze across the moors with my deep-set, bloodshot eyes warmed by the knowledge that I had lived the Only Right Life, but it will be infinitely more possible to live in This Life with Scott lying next to me...

My Other Life just got a tiny bit less scary.