Lately, it has felt as though lots of doors are being closed . . . . without the proverbial window being opened. I sent the whiniest email to my friend Gina today . . . unloaded all my perceived injustices of the past few months . . . all of which has had me thinking this move has been a mistake. I feel so very much without a home. I love the weather and beauty of Colorado . . . most days, even when things seem to be at their bleakest, I still feel blessed that I'm living in such a beautiful state, with so many things to do at my fingertips. My daughter and I are living much healthier lifestyles in terms of eating and exercise. . . . But there have and continue to be so many obstacles. Everything seems to be a challenge. I miss my friends more than I could ever have imagined. I miss my parents . . . to the point of aching . . . I feel so very alone, without family. I was talking about this with someone over the weekend who also had lost both of his parents a few years ago . . . . even though you're in your 40's, there is a tremendous sense of being an orphan . . . . of losing the only 2 people in the entire world who will love you no matter what you do . . . and even though I know I'm very important to my daughter, I will never again have the importance of being someone's child . . . and that is a very huge loss . . . it leaves a void that simply no one else can fill.
On top of that . . . no spouse, no partner . . . no one to help take out the trash, lock the doors at night, help with bills or household errands or take Bug to school or athletic events . . . no one to make me chicken soup when I'm sick . . . or share a dinner with . . . or snuggle up to when it's storming or I've had a bad dream. . . . And no prospects in sight of that changing anytime in my future. I keep trying . . . I keep going on dates . . . and the next day I always regret going. The more I date, the sadder I feel . . . and the more I feel the loss of two men in my life that mean so very much to me . . . those chapters in my life are over, but it doesn't mean I don't have regrets.
Last week was extremely crappy . . . and on top of it all . . . the only two people who consistently have included me in their lives since we moved here, and whose daughter is Bug's best friend here, are moving back to Chicago in about 3 weeks. These people are my dinner buddies and biking buddies. We go to the pool together. We walk and meet for ice cream. Bug and their daughter were going to be on a soccer team together this fall, and we were going to carpool for practices and games. They're the only ones I would feel comfortable leaving Bug with if I were to go out of town ----- in short, they are my only support system here ----- and that will be gone in 3 weeks.
My job is less than satisfying. Even though I don't miss the crazy hours/7 days a week of my last job, I miss the intensity of the work, being a part of the administrative team, feeling needed, being consulted on major projects, and I miss the people I worked with . . . even the kooky ones that drove me crazy at times. Here, I'm a much smaller fish in a much larger pond . . . I don't have the trial practice I once did . . . and I guess my ego is taking a hit for it. The positive tradeoff, of course, is that I have more time for Bug and for a personal life. But feeling underutilized is never a good thing.
There have been lots of tears the past 2 days especially, and lots of Internet searches for reciprocity with my law license. But I don't want to go back to the South, and I think this is such a great state . . . if I could just find a way to make it work. Some of the other states that interest me do not have reciprocity, and there is no way I want to ever take another bar exam. And I don't want to drag Bug around the U.S. just because I can't find my happiness. She's going into 5th grade ----- if I move again, I want it to be permanent, and preferably with a spouse. So the tears are a result of not knowing what the hell to do with my life at the age of 44 and feeling like a complete loser because I don't have it together at this point.
But tonight . . . a small window opened . . . the mother of a girl on Bug's volleyball team asked me a month or so ago to come visit her book club. She remembered that I had said that one of the things I missed most from Arkansas was my book club. So she invited me to hers. I was hesitant . . . because this one is all women and mine in Arkansas was mostly men. . . . and I liked the challenge of holding my own with them . . . I don't read chick lit and have no desire to . . . and I liked the fact that we coupled our book club meetings with lots of wine, so the conversation always got . . . interesting. Anyway, I appreciated . . . very much . . . that this person invited me. I checked out the books for the next few months . . . very good mix of fiction and non-fiction . . . no chick lit . . . and the author of "Boxing for Cuba" is attending the one in September as he lives in the neighborhood. So . . . hmmm . . . might be okay. There is even a cookie swap for December, which made me feel some connection to Arkansas. Every December in Little Rock, there were several cookie swaps on the calendar for me or Bug and me. My friend, Graeme, throws the most wonderful cookie swap every year that had become my most favorite holiday party tradition. I just knew Denver would not have cookie swaps . . . it seemed too Southern. But yet, this book club is doing it . . . another plus.
Well . . . I went tonight. Thank God. There were 11 of us. And it was a wonderful group of women. Well educated, well traveled, well read. And a wide age range. One had just finished law school, and others were grandmothers, with many of us in our "middle years". There was a widow who moved here from California after her husband died. She grew up in Europe and had wonderful stories of living through some tense times. A couple of writers, one of whom is recently divorced. Some married without children, some with. One from Texas and one from Richmond, Virginia, said they liked that I was from the South. But we all had in common the love of the written word, from actual books we like to hold in our hands, not ebooks off of the Internet or from that new kindle thing Amazon is touting. Actual books with actual pages that you turn as the characters come to life.
The book we discussed was "Interpreter of Maladies", a collection of short stories by the fabulous Jhumpa Lahiri (author of "The Namesake"). The discussion was lively. . . . the noise level of 11 women can be quite deafening. The hostess had recently returned from India (the author's parents are Indian and a number of her settings are in India or are about Indian characters trying to assimilate in other places, usually the U.S.) . . . but anyway . . . the hostess prepared Indian foods for us and served Iced Chai . . . . along with lots of wine . :):) The women, all of whom were from the Hilltop neighborhood, different from mine, embraced me into their group as I would not have expected. In light of the despair and anguish I've felt lately, their warmth felt like a life preserver being thrown to me after swimming in very deep water for a very long time. I just gripped on and held tight all evening, and at the end . . . I felt like I was starting down the path of having some new friends, not just acquaintances . . . but people who were going to be part of my life. . . . I hope so. I really want good things to happen here, even if not in Denver . . . perhaps Boulder or Colorado Springs. I want to find happiness . . . . or at least contentment . . . in Colorado. I think tonight . . . that window I've been looking for opened just a tiny bit. I'm going to try to enjoy the fresh air.
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