I’m Good, Thanks

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”

~Leo Tolstoy

In the early days after my divorce, over a decade ago, friends and co-workers asked me why I was still unattached. This line of questioning was on par with asking a dating couple when they intend to get married, or newlyweds when, not if, they’ll have children. No one asks a couple who have a painfully obvious dysfunctional marriage when they plan to separate. But, the minute the ink is dry on the dissolution papers, a new cycle of questions begins. When are you going to date? Why are you still single? Do you want to die alone?

Don’t we all die alone, even if someone is sitting next to us? If I’m dead, what does it matter to me if a neighbor calls the police after a foul odor coming from my house causes concern? Let’s imagine a coroner identifies my cadaver several days after stage III rigor mortise (active decomposition) has commenced, why should I care if I’m already spent? If my rotted carcass is half-eaten by my deaf, blind, and barely mobile Maltese, bon appétit, Simone.

Until today, I’ve not been prepared to articulate the answer to the question, why am I single? It is with both considerable alleviation and profound anguish; I share this epiphany.

It’s time for show and tell.

How is it that not one of the millions of unemployed submissive Republican Christian virgins aged 18-25, without tattoos or piercings, has troweled up this dried slab of man-jerky? It must be the no Harry Potter stipulation that is limiting his pool of applicants. Or, are they aging out, like Leonardo DiCaprio’s dates?

I am forlorn, doomed to my solitude because I am not a candidate for that vacancy. I must live my life free of a motel room to keep tidy for a struggling pedophile searching for a childlike victim barely of legal age.

This will shock you. People have, for the most part, stopped asking me why I’m single. In fact I’ve been told that no men would be interested in a woman, like me, who doesn’t need a them for help. My independence is emasculating. It is my tragic flaw that I can jiggle the chain in my toilet tank with confidence, that I am a woman with power tools and I know how to use them.

After a lifetime spent taking care of others. I think I’m good. Someday I will move, live in a windowless straw hut on a secluded beach. I will have a sign weaved out of sharp purple thistle flowers on my door. It will say “no solicitors.” I will not offer candy to trick or treaters, nor will I take part in any of the other holidays; I won’t have a calendar. There will be no forwarding address. I will be me left to my devices, writing, uninterrupted. A girl’s gotta have dreams.

I’m off to therapy. I will be of sound mind in time to write tomorrow’s post.

Also,

Dear Colin Firth,

If you are reading this, please know I will make an exception.

Lydia Firth