I think I’ll start with a paper heart

Posted February 7th, 2005 by Michelle

I got home from work after 8 PM and poured myself a glass of water and went to put on my jammies and in the thirty seconds it took for me to walk into my bedroom and open a drawer, my cat jumped up on the table, knocked over the water onto the work I’d brought home and then watched as the glass fell off the table and shattered. I keep calling him an *asshole* but I don’t think he’s noticed.

I’m still looking for a car.

In the time I’ve been single, I could have gotten an undergrad degree. Or two. “Single”, though, is a very relative term, since I consider myself single for four years in that I haven’t been in love for four years. I just wrote a piece for my local paper about being single here in wine country, and I think it’s pretty funny, but it’s hard to tell. My mom was editing it, and forced me from the general to the specific (“it’s funnier if YOU are pathetic, rather than the situation being pathetic”). It was actually pretty cathartic, to come out and say, not only am I single, but man, ya’ll are a bunch of LOSERS! Except I don’t mean that, either. I also managed to write this 1500 word article without directly insulting anyone I’ve dated since moving here. Sometimes the facts speak for themselves.

I’ve lived a lifetime of pearls before swine, and apologizing for any wails of despair, and wondering (briefly) if particular choices were good or bad. But lately… lately, I just don’t think about it too much. I feel very done with apologizing for anything, or second-guessing any of my actions. I also feel very done with looking for a god in the mere mortals who surround me. Really, it’s laughable, some of the men I’ve met in this valley, and some I’ve met all over the world. I’ve latched on to the two or three traits that seemed bearable and promptly forgotten about everything else, even if just for an hour or two of remebering what affection and intimacy feels like. But I also know that my idea of what affection and intimacy feel like is utterly warped. I don’t want what I’ve already had; I want something totally different.

And so I’m not so much dating right now. Actively, in fact- actively not. I know, in the well of my heart, that he’s not in Napa, and that I’ve yet to meet him, so until that time, I hope to keep my pearls to myself.

In years past, the “holiday” coming up next Monday was a fluorescent marker, an obnoxious road sign, a yellow flag on the playing field of my love life. One year single, two years single, three… But this year, it feels like the nothingness it actually is, the meaningless. I have loved, and I’ve loved well, and I don’t love right now. What I am doing is singing, writing, and being of service for a living. My family feels a million miles away, and my work is covered with water and cat hair, but, well. I really can’t complain.