The View Askance

I used to be so friendly. I was brazen, I was bold, I feared no rejection. Even as a child, I never met a stranger. I could talk my way into or out of almost any situation. My favorite uncle suffered a series of debilitating strokes before he joined our family, and since I can remember he had very poor expressive communication… making him my favorite uncle by virtue of being an easy target for my incessant cheerful rambling. My mother has a photograph taken of me and Uncle George out in my childhood backyard. I’m sitting on the swing set, and Uncle George is sitting beside me. We are both in rapture – me at having someone to pay very close attention to my verbal meanderings, him presumably to have the rapt love and attention of a bright little girl. We were the perfect pair.

Aside from those awkward teenage years (which I successfully navigated by capitalizing on my winsome personality and becoming queen of the misfit toys), I have always been able to make good friends with complete strangers, under unusual circumstances, in no time whatsoever. Children, animals and the elderly all love me. I suppose it’s safe to say that I’m charismatic. A former employer once told me that I ‘flirted’ with everyone and everything. I just love people – I am turned on by our variety, the crazy mosaic of humanity, the intricate dance of circumstance and opinion.

All of that seems to have come to a screeching halt with the onset of my separation and the culmination of my divorce. The process of divorce is rather like having a really bad car accident every day for about 18 months. Ever been in a bad car accident? There’s this awful moment, after the crash and before the pain where you’re hanging from your seat belt wondering what the hell just happened…. How did the world become upside down all of a sudden? With divorce, you don’t just lose your best friend, your primary confidante, your presumed soul mate… you lose your friends. Married people beget married friends and regardless of how friendly the divorce, it’s uncomfortable for the bystanders. Suffice it to say that I find myself leading a rather solitary existence these days. Me! The girl who could, under dire circumstances, probably make friends with a cardboard box!

I found myself going through my regular daily routine on the elliptical the other day, bemoaning my bereft state. ‘ I used to be so friendly’, I thought. What has changed? I think perhaps it’s that, for the first time in my life, I truly lack a ‘home base’. I’m living in a new area, my closest family is 2500 miles away, I’m newly divorced. It’s kind of like being on an ice floe in the middle of the ocean. I’m on a fairly steady course these days, but I lack a foundation – who wants to align themselves with that? I’m not in school… I’m the ‘boss’ at work (and have already learned – the hard way of course – not to make friends with the help)… I have no children…. How does a single thirty-something woman of my ilk make friends? Here I am, paying for a gym membership and seeing the same people every day – and going about my routine with my earbuds stuffed in, hoping someone else will make the first move.

After my workout and shower, in the locker room, I found myself in possession of only one sock. Having two feet, this was not a tenable situation. ‘For the love of Pete’, I complained to my neighbor. ‘It’s not just the dryer anymore. Now my gym bag is eating my socks’.

Silence.

Thinking perhaps that she had slipped away while my back was turned and that I was actually talking to myself (this happens more than you can imagine, to me), I turned around. And found that the woman I had been cheerfully chattering at was in fact still there, and obviously had heard what I had said. I swear, there I stood, wrapped in my terry robe (ergo practically naked in front of a stranger), screwing my courage to the sticking point, trying to reach out to another human…. and she was looking at me as though I had sprouted a second head. I made eye contact. I smiled. Still nothing. Like, in my imagination, there were crickets. It was that quiet.

I honestly snapped a little. ‘OK’, I muttered. ‘I guess I’m alone in my barefoot misery’. Like she didn’t think I was crazy enough without that rejoinder, right? But seriously folks, how hard is it to extend a hand of friendship to the potentially crazy, one-socked woman in the gym locker room? I was clearly harmless. Thank goodness she was coming in as I was going out – she quickly stuffed her things into her locker and headed out to the gym, leaving me to finish toweling off and getting ready in peace. Alone again, naturally I thought, as I finished drying off.

It wasn’t until I was unpacking my gym bag at home later in the day that I caught sight of the feather. Sticking up jauntily from the top of my terry cloth hoodie, it must have sneaked out of one of my feather pillows into the laundry. No wonder gym-girl had looked at me as though I was from outer space. I bore a striking resemblance to Howard the Duck. Like the deck is not stacked enough against me… now I’m leaving the house looking like a deranged chicken. I have got to get out of my own way.

I am writing this from my favorite pool hall – rather than staying home tonight to write. I am the eternal optomist. I used to be so friendly.

In: Uncategorized | | #