My fucking essay

I said this to my Journal in September: “There's nothing I'm more well acquainted with than loneliness. I'm not even so sure I mind it so much any more because it really is so rich.”

Who the fuck was I kidding?

Fuck that whole Zen Buddhist “all is suffering” and Kahlil Gibran “pain of too much tenderness” crap. I'm fucking lonely and I hate it. I've been so fucking lonely for so fucking long I don't know anything else. Fuck the fucking richness of loneliness. It goes like this…

You eat alone, you sleep alone, you cry alone, you are disappointed alone, you are happy alone, you are high alone, you are sick alone, you are looking at the most beautiful night sky of all time alone, you get the news of your dad's cancer alone, you find a lump in your breast alone, you fix your car alone, you pay your bills alone, you run your life alone, you face your death alone, you do it all alone, and some asshole comes along and tells you how you shouldn't be so “hard.”

You see the hardness in your own face, but it's there because your life is hard, and there's no one else but you to pick up the slack. There's no one to lean on, to be with, to hold you for just one minute.

Oh, there's a wide assortment of married men who want to drop by and help out. But let's just say you know what it feels like when your husband runs out to comfort some grieving, needy woman. It's not pretty. It makes you swallow bile, and swallowing bile is a surefire way to soften even the hardest of females, don't you think?

Fuck crying alone. Fuck eating alone. Fuck sleeping alone. Fuck it's very fuckingness.

And another thing…

I am sick into the core of my innards of being judged for what I look like, how I dress, what I eat, what I don't eat, for being sexual, too tough, too needy, too cheeky; for wearing the pearls, not wearing the pearls, being single, being married twice, not having children, not going to church, sitting with Buddhists, not wearing a bra, saying “fuck,” and getting drunk.

I'm not exactly sure what it is about me that invites folks to critique every aspect of my existence. I am not a celebrity. Were I a celebrity, I could enjoy the cushion of obscene amounts of cash money that would insulate me from others' ongoing assessment of my very being. But I'm not a celebrity. I'm girl technology journalist living in a very white suburb of Northern Virginia, where 50-something liberals believe they are superior for reasons I cannot discern.

But I vent like Mel Gibson on a bender. What I really can't stand is the sight of my engagement ring lying beside me on the receipt that tells me it's worth $216.50.

$216.50.

The love of my life ripped me apart for $216.50.

It's not as if I'd never seen the receipt before. I've seen it, but I never looked at it. I thought it said $1,216.50. OK, that's not a lot, but he was a divorced father, and I loved him.

I love him. So I didn't look too closely. That would be unseemly. It would be hard.

But he's gone, and I'm alone, and soon the car will need tires more than I will need the memory of an illusory love.

And there's not a thing I can do but sit here and cry, and I don't care who you are, that's fucked up.

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Copyright 2010 by Deborah McAdams. All Rights Reserved. For Reprint Rights, click here.