Better than the alternative, or How can I be lonely when I'm surrounded by all these people?

I had an epiphanous (not a word, I know) moment the other day at the library. My YW teacher from when I was about fourteen came in, and I helped her find a book and we talked for a minute. She asked me what I was doing these days, where I was living. I told her I had bought a place here in Orem. She asked me if I lived alone, to which I answered yes, then she asked me if I liked living alone. What I should have said at this point was an enthusiastic, and entirely dishonest, yes--of course I'm thoroughly enjoying living alone. See, as a single Mormon woman, you are supposed to desire to be a wife and a mother, but you're never, ever supposed to feel sad about not having it. And you're certainly not supposed to express that sadness.


I don't quite know yet where I'm going with this, and it's scary to tell the truth about how I feel. So bear with me. Or stop reading here. Your call.


I do want to be a wife and a mother. I want it more than anything. I've tried and tried and tried to make myself want other things, to be ambitious about other things. But this is what I want. I don't want a dog, or a roommate or another degree or a prestigious career. I want a really good man to love in my bed and a baby or two or five sleeping (or not sleeping, I don't care!) in the other rooms. And I am confused and frustrated and so sad about my inability to fulfill the one real desire I have. I don't get it. It hurts. Some days (like Tuesday), it flattens me. If I'm lucky, and I usually am now, it waits until I'm all alone before it flattens me, but it does. Runs me down like a Mac truck.

But when someone asks me if I like living alone, I can't say that. I can't tell the truth because in addition to continuously failing at this one real desire in my life, if I admit how rotten I feel about it, I've failed again. If I don't feel all bright and shiny about it, well, then I've failed at service, compassion, charity, and the use of the Atonement, as well. I'm selfish if I even care that I have feelings about it at all.

The only thing worse than being the sad sack spinster is being the sad sack spinster who doesn't put on her happy face when in the company of any other human being.

So, I'm supposed to find comfort and peace in what? My nieces are kind of fascinated by my living alone. Leslie, who is nine, asked me the other day about it. "Who comforts you, Aunt Mar? When you're alone and you get scared, who comforts you?" Wow. The only person I know who is intuitive enough to both understand how hard it can be, and willing to state the truth of it, is a nine year old. The truth is, nobody does. When the bogey man comes at 3 am, and every fear and hopeless thought and dissappointed desire crawls out from under my bed and spreads its cold tentacles over my mind, the only ally I have is God. And as much as I love Him and know He loves me, I generally find Him disturbingly silent at these times. I beg and plead for Him to remove this cup. And yet His will...His will.

So I fight the fears, the hopeless thoughts, the disappointed desires. I know intellectually that I'm not alone, because honestly, I know I couldn't take it alone, but it sure as hell feels like I am without aid at those moments. Then I come to work, try to be kind and compassionate to the people at the library when I'm exhausted and sad. When people ask how I am, I say great and smile and try to change the subject. And I look around at all these people who are close to me physically all the time--patrons and colleagues and church folks and sometimes even family--and yet I can't find a way to move beyond the mundane surface of our lives. I can't make them kindred, can't let them see me any more than I can break through their facades.

Intimacy takes so much time. It requires time and touch and a willingness to bear one another's burdens in an exhausting way. It means we eat together, and decide what color to paint the walls together, and pray together and disagree together, and wind our arms around each other, and sometimes fight and then make up together. And that requires face time, every single damn day. And it is essential. That's why we mate. The comfort of an intimate friend can literally save us. Yet we can't, with mortal limitations, offer the comfort of our intimacy to all that many souls. You can't be with me at 3 am when my demons arrive, because you need to be there at 3 am for your wife, or your husband, or your child.

I don't begrudge you that. Don't misunderstand me. But you'll have to understand why, when I'm fighting the hell out of my demons at 3 am alone, the discomfort of living in a house with people I share no intimacy with does not appeal to me. The only thing worse than living alone for me would be sharing my house with strangers, and that's the alternative. So, that's what I said to my YW advisor who only sort of knew me 20 years ago. When she asked me if I liked living alone, I told her the truth--No. I don't like living alone. But it's better than the alternatives. And, with a tinge of discomfort, she politely closed the conversation and went on her way.

I've written myself into a tearful corner, I fear, and it's 11:16 pm and I still need to walk home. There are happy, joyful things in my life. Trust me, there are. So many that I am embarrassed that this effects me so. But it does. I crave an intimate friend, yet I no longer no how to build that kind of relationship. And I fear putting that kind of effort into another friend of the kind who finds a new best friend and doesn't have time to eat, and fight, and laugh, and talk with me very much any more. In the Garden, God commanded Adam and Eve to cleave unto each other. I need the kind of intimate friend I can cleave unto, I can remain with. A decidedly un-modern, entirely un-feminist perspective, I know. And yet.