The Angry Muse

I lived the first twenty-someodd years of my life in almost complete isolation.

The past five years before I moved to Virginia was especially bad.  I had a cheap place to live, but it was twenty miles outside of town in the middle of the woods.  I had to get up in the wee hours of the morning to go to work, I worked until mid-evening, then I had to drive another hour back home to the woods.  I lived so far away from everything that actually meeting another human being was incredibly challenging.

Getting in my car and driving to Blockbuster to get a DVD was an hour-long round trip.  In order to save money on gas I joined the mail order service.  Going to a restaurant was a minimum thirty minute round trip.  In order to save time and money I learned how to cook.  I tried to get involved with the local theater, but it was made abundantly clear to me that unless you were one of the 8-10 people who had been with that theater for at least ten years there was really no point in trying.  I took a couple of classes at the local university, but I was usually the lone old chick in a class full of 19 year olds. 

At the end of the day, for five full years, I was at home in the woods by myself waiting for the day to end so I could go to sleep and get ready to start a new one.  Any kind of social interaction was a rare treat. 

Anyway, now I’m nearly thirty and I’m so confused. 

I’m wondering why I don’t have the things that pretty much everyone else in the universe has.  I don’t have a group of girl friends to call when I want to go out and be silly.  I don’t know HOW to get that.  I need and want that badly!  What am I doing wrong?  I’m a kind, compassionate, funny, caring person… Why does it seem as though I have to work twice as hard to get the basic pleasures in life? 

This is not me feeling sorry for myself.  It’s a valid question that is about to drive me nutso, and I don’t know how to figure it out. 

I have that to worry about, my medical issues, my job that is making it difficult to wake up in the morning, and a million other things.  I just need some relief, and I’m still having those dark dark thoughts that are terrifying as all hell.

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I’m not sure how much more of this I can take.

Everything is going wrong all at once and I just want to go AWAY.

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Last night I had a hand full of sleeping pills in my hand and I considered popping them in my mouth.  I need help and I can’t find it.  I have been trying to find a friend (anyone, anywhere) who has time or is willing to just talk to me for a few minutes and nobody will.  I need help, I can’t find it, and I don’t know what to do. 

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I had a rough few weeks there.  I was depressed to the point where I was having a hard time waking up in the morning, and a ridiculous part of me was starting to regret ever coming here.

It’s okay now.

Today I went out to roam around as I used to back in North Carolina, and even after five years of living in Greensboro I rarely saw a soul that I knew when I was out.  Well, I was out for an hour a little while ago and I saw four familiar faces.  It was the strangest thing, but I’m not complaining! 

I’m getting involved with some things, I’ve met some great new people, I’m having fun, and yeah… it’s good now.

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Well, that’s great…

I’m going to be sick for the rest of my life.

On one hand, now I know.  I went to see the doctor that the guy in Greensboro told me about, and after taking some blood and looking at my records from the tests I had done in Greensboro he didn’t need to do anything else.  I’m sick, I know what it is, and I know how to treat it.

On the other hand, I’m going to be sick for the REST OF MY LIFE.

Shit.

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I turn 30 in a couple of months, and I thought that maybe I’d get to fulfill a lifelong dream this year.  I wanted to have a party because it’s my birthday.  Not a “birthday party,” but simply a party on my birthday.

Well, the event that may have made me able to make a few more friends in the area fell through today.  I wasn’t entirely expecting it, but there was enough hope there to make the dream of making new friends in the area and the birthday party dream seem possible. 

Now… I don’t know. 

All I know is that I’m incredibly sad right now, quite lonely, and I don’t know what to do.

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First of all, I had a child!  She’s a year old gerbil named Mammie, and she’s the cutest rodent I or you or anyone else has ever seen!  I had no idea that you could adopt little animals from the SPCA, and I highly recommend it for anyone who is looking to get a new pet no matter what the breed.  I’m so glad I did!

Secondly, I’ve been working hard!  My job is absolutely crazy, and I think I’m doing pretty well so far.  I will be getting some extra money some time in the first part of July, so no matter what I have no room to complain. 

Thirdly, I’ve been having fun!  I’ve been able to jump in the pool, watch great movies with great company, go to a water park, and smile a LOT!  Even more great things are coming soon!

Lastly, I’m pretty drattin’ happy here.  No, it’s not perfect and I am still having to fight the shyness thing that haunts me every day, but I can say without hesitation of any kind that I AM happy.  That’s really all I wanted. 

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As much as I am enjoying living here in my new place, I have a problem.

My problem is that I don’t have any girl friends.

See, right now ALL I want is to call some of my great friends and ask them if they want to go out and get drinks and hang out.  That’s ALL.

I have no way of doing that, though.

I had women that I hung out with at home, but they were all super prim and proper conservative christians who didn’t do things like that.  Their idea of a good time was going out to church potlucks and watching softball games for church leagues.  I would go to that stuff just to see my pals (despite how boring they were, they were all I had and sometimes you have to make sacrifices), but I wanted more.

They were all women that I’d known for years since I never really got a lot of opportunities to make other friends who were more like me.

Now, here I am in a brand new city and I have this problem.

I don’t know how to make girl friends.   Well, I do know how.   It’s typically done by meeting people through other friends, but here I have no place to start.  It’s baffling and frustrating.

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I’ve been in my new home for a couple of days. 

It’s so amazing. 

It may be a little bit pitiful that I’m constantly awestruck by the fact that I can get in my car and go grocery shopping, eat dinner, and go to the beach without putting more than maybe ten miles on my car, but I don’t care.  It’s amazing. 

I went to the beach yesterday, and become overwhelmed by the fact that it is two miles away.

The job, so far, is perfect.  I’m the best student in my class..

I haven’t even felt as sick as I normally do.

I will write more about it later, but I’m about to go to Busch Gardens. 

Yeah.

Life is good.

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It’s pretty crazy.

I’ve had a hard time with loneliness and sadness for quite a long time in certain situations.  When I found myself forced to be completely alone in my middle of nowhere house, I’d become so overwhelmed by it that I had to sometimes take an over the counter sleeping pill to make myself snap out of it and sleep.

I think I figured out what my deal was in the last two days. 

All that I really had here in North Carolina was my job.  This town is completely dead end and boring, I had zero opportunities to do much of anything, and I lived in a place where doing something as simple as going to Blockbuster was a 45 minute round trip.  My job was my sole source of getting out of here that had some level of consistency.   I tried to become a part of the only theater group in town, but they were such a clique that I was promptly snubbed.  I had to drive to Raleigh to do anything interesting (book groups, theater groups, blah blah), and that’s no way to make friends that you can see often.

I also hated most every moment that I spent in that office.  Sunday nights were horrible for me because I spent those hours with a stomach ache.  I dreaded the start of a new week.  I was living to get through Monday-Friday as quickly as possible.   That’s no way to live, but the job market around here is dreadful and I didn’t have many choices in regards to getting out of there.

I was able to handle most days well because I don’t live alone.  Don’t get me wrong… I LOVE my alone time.  I relish it.  I’m a classic introvert, and I need more alone time than I do people time.  I just don’t like being by myself for extended periods of time.  When I was stuck in this house completely alone with nothing but getting up to go to work in the morning in my head it ate me up on the inside. 

Well, I’m moving to a new town and a new job on Tuesday, and my last day at the awful job that I’d had for nearly four years was last Friday.  

I’ve been alone in the quiet house since Friday night, and I’ve yet to feel lonely or sad.  I feel like someone who just just managed to remove binding, heavy weights from my body, and I can breathe.  I’m still sick and in pain (that’s something I haven’t even touched on here, so I’ll talk about that later), but I can breathe.

I actually have something to look forward to. 

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