Tonight, I am melancholy. I’d love to tell you why, but I’m not quite sure myself. A heavy swell of emotions from some under-exposed cavern of my heart has been bubbling up all day. I could brush them off when I was busy helping a loved one run errands, but the minute I was alone again, there they were, pulling at me with feverish desperation. As I glanced at the “Self-Care” journal I’d bought earlier today, it occurred to me that I haven’t done anything special for myself in a while. Maybe a little self-care would quiet my heart’s cry.

So, I drove to the lake to watch the sunset. It’s one of my favorite things to do. But, tonight, the marina was full of loud, obnoxious people, smoking foul, obnoxious things. It wasn’t easy, but I was surprisingly successful at blocking them out. The sunset was gorgeous, with shades of blues, oranges, pinks, and purples filling the sky and bouncing off the water. I was able to block out the people outside my car. What I couldn’t block out were the feelings within.

I was fighting tears and had no clue why. I sat at the marina until the sky and water began to turn black then headed… well, actually, I had no idea where I was headed. I knew I didn’t want to go home to the place where I am house-sitting and be alone. I needed to talk. I needed to get whatever this is to the surface. Who knows, it might be connected to the anxieties and stresses that are suffocating me. I definitely needed to talk!

However, no one was available – and I was crushed. Now, this isn’t’ the first time that I needed to talk, and all of my people were preoccupied. But for some reason, this time was the most despairing. I’m not sure why it was far more painful than the many other times. Perhaps because I’ve spent the past couple of years dealing with everything all alone because I’ve been all alone. And now I’m here, I’m home, and for the most part, I feel alone. Maybe it’s because I spent all of Covid in isolation, desperately wishing to be in the same room with people who are now mere minutes away, and I still barely see them.

Those are probably smaller pieces to the puzzle, but I think there’s more to it. The fact that I’m forty years old keeps nagging at me. Not in an existential way, I honestly love aging, but it feels irresponsible to be this age and in a position of desolation. It hit me that no one is available because they have families they’ve built around themselves; spouses and offspring who support the structure of relation, kinship, and communion. They all have tribes, and I am standing on the outskirts, alone.

I feel like that grasshopper who frittered away the summer then had no food or shelter when winter arrived. I’m forty, nearing the winter of my life, and I’ve made zero efforts to secure a tribe of my own. I am no one’s priority or obligation. My fears, joys, triumphs, failures, and tears are mine and mine alone. No one else falters or benefits because of them, except me. That had always been a comforting thought – until tonight.

In Aesop’s famous fable, the grasshopper was left out in the cold to die, but that was after a fun, lazy summer. I wonder if my summer is coming to an end. I’ve THOROUGHLY enjoyed being single! I wouldn’t have had it any other way (with one heartbreaking exception). But now, as I stand outside in the chilly air, looking at closed doors, I sense new questions and wonderings within… possibly, I dare say – regret.

Of course, this could simply be a rough night, succeeding a rough day. And tomorrow, I’ll have shed this melancholy like old skin and fall back in love with my unencumbered single life. I guess time will tell.