return to the single life

i miss this.

if you read this regularly and wondered where i'd disappeared to in the last 2 weeks, yr answer is this: i've been here all along, but away from my computer! what do you think about that?!

the truth is that i spend far more time on the internet when i am alone. i used to worry i have become technology-dependent, but i realize now that it's just a proxy for communicating with ppl i can't live without. hm, well, that and a convenient distraction. but i could quit if i wanted to, and i did!

2 weeks was the exact amount of time my boyfriend was in LA. we were making up for lost time. 6 months is a long time not to see someone who makes you obliviously and ridiculously happy. but now he's gone again, still in transit on his return to that lucky country of Turkey. and now things are quiet and lonely. it's back to cooking dinners for two and only eating half, saving leftovers in tupperware containers, not drinking wine and lighting candles, brushing my teeth all by myself, taking a week to finish a carton of orange juice, taking a week and a half to finish a loaf of bread, waiting in line at the grocery store all by myself, sorting receipts and grading papers, working out obsessively and yes, blogging, twittering, tumblring, and checking email because now i have the time.

there are infinite daily events in modern life that have the potential to be either extremely gratifying or intensely miserable. these ritual behaviors can be vastly improved by pleasant companionship, eased by a reassuring hand or the proximity of a familiar human touch. unfortunately, these are frequently things we take for granted, and these events comprise the majority of every day. and as with so many things, we notice and lament the lack more than we appreciate the presence, sometimes. it is bad enough to feel so alone, but then something as small as getting into a car and looking over to the passenger seat and realizing there's no one there to talk to or hold yr hand thru rush hour traffic, or to notice all the leftover pasta in the pan after you're already full, those are things that make you heartsick.

coming back to my apartment last night after dropping Ben off at the airport encapsulated the feeling that lingers this evening as i write this, that will probably persist in all its manifest forms for the next 4 months until i see him again or have another visitor: an empty apartment, only my clothes in a messy heap on the chair, pillows stacked on one side of the bed, one set of towels, one toothbrush in a cup.

i once wrote that returning to an empty apartment after weeks of constant companionship is perhaps the most depressing experience imaginable. but i was wrong. what saddens me most is returning to the way life is, rather than the way it could be.

-stephan!e