A Soft Sort of Sadness

There’s a phrase that I’ve used over and over in my writing, probably ad nauseum, and it’s “a soft sort of sadness”. I like the sibilance of it (especially when I say it out loud. I’m a bit of a lisper with S.) The phrase to me sounds like the feeling, as if sadness is that type of snow that falls in heavy flakes and in pure silence. It’s a sadness that is not all consuming, but comforting somehow, in an artistic-I’m-alone sort of way.

I feel this soft sort of sadness today and most days when I think, really think, about dating. And it isn’t dating necessarily that I mean. I mean when I think about the kind of relationship I want…and that soft sort of sadness? It’s a longing. An ache. An awareness that I do not have the love in my life that I so richly want…and I feel…I deserve.

What I want is simple. I want someone to look at me and love me for who I am. I want them to light up when they see me. I want conversations, and silence, and passion, and above all, I want trust. I want love in the little things. I want to make him breakfast sometimes. I want him to play with my hair, especially when I’m stressed. I want text messages just because he’s thinking about me. And I want those kisses, those kind of kisses that start small and end with an ache so palpable you feel it in the entirety of your body. I want real, honest, true 100% love.

I don’t think I’ve ever had it.

I think I’ve felt it, once. Nearly felt it twice. I think someone has felt it for me. But it’s never been at the same time. And I seem to attract men in my life who feel all these things, but they feel them for someone else, and ultimately, I become someone they can talk to, share with, but it never progresses beyond that.

I had a conversation with someone on the phone last night, someone I would very much like to know, but I’m afraid it’s another soft sort of sadness. One should not read Pablo Neruda poems alone or they will quote things like “Tonight I can write the saddest lines” or “Another’s. He will be another’s.” See? I’m quoting right now.

I don’t have a great epiphany right now except to say that I am finally buying a house (this will connect. Just go with me on this). My whole life, I have drifted from place to place, experience to experience, and what I’ve secretly yearned for was a home. I will have that physical place soon, that place that is undeniably mine. I guess I’m looking for another home too, and forgive me in being corny, but it’s the kind of home you find with another person. That kind of comfort where you feel loved and honored, and you can sit on the couch together, nestled next to each other, so comfortable you don’t really know where one stops and the other begins. That kind of home where you just feel that anything that happens in your life, you will be okay because there is someone there with you, watching out for you.

Yep. That’s what I want. I think it’s pretty simple, and at the same time, it seems to me to be absolutely impossible.

That sadness? Still here. Soft and cool…but maybe like the snow, it’s not permanent.

Something Fragile and Beautiful

Usually, I try to look at life lightly…to interpret the bad things that happen with a humorous slant. Every once in a while, though, it gets a little hard to be funny. This is how I felt this week. The idea that my life right now is just not funny. There are, certainly, funny elements, but mostly right now it’s twinged with pain.

So on Wednesday while I was on break from recording, I sank into my chair, closed the door to the booth and had a good old-fashioned cry. I cried because everything right now takes so much energy. I cried because when my kids call for me to pick them up, I can’t do it. I cried because my foot hurts, because it’s broken, because I’m still humiliated that my ex’s fiancée took me to  the emergency room and I had no choice but to accept her kindness. I cried because my arms shake from using crutches, because there’s snow and ice everywhere and I’m terrified of slipping. I cried because everywhere I go, people offer to help me and I accept their help. I can’t manage all the doors on my own; I can’t carry anything to my car. Right now, my life is a series of “I can’t”s and it is, at the heart of it, very sad.

On top of that, it’s the holidays. I offered to let my ex take the kids Christmas eve and day because another thing I can’t do is get presents ready for them on my own.

Everything will work out. I have friends and family helping me. There are times though, when I just feel like I’ve had enough struggle. Of course, good things have happened too: my book getting published, my narration gigs, my job at Kendall, my radio plays. But when you’re feeling blue, you just feel it.

I’m trying to look for the hidden purpose behind this. What’s the message I’m not getting? One possibility: for most of my life, I’ve felt invisible. Never pretty enough or smart enough or talented enough. In my marriage, I was never seen as a full person. If writers have a theme, then mine is one of longing to be seen.

Right now, everywhere I go people see me. They open doors for me. They take time to slow down and help me to my car. They ask me questions: “How are you managing?” “I see your car seats. How old are your kids?” “What happened to you?” This too has made me cry. The irony is it’s not because it makes me sad. It’s that in all of this, I am profoundly amazed by the kindness of strangers:  the time they take to see me struggling and offer to help.

I think I’ll emerge from this a more empathetic person. A more humbled person. A person grateful for the smallest of things, like being able to pick up your own child and hold them to your heart. It’s not a funny moment in my life, but, eventually, maybe I’ll see it as something fragile and beautiful.