The Hill

It was around 1969, maybe in the early or late summer. My parents and I were driving back from somewhere but I was too young to really remember for sure, but I know we were in a dustbowl part of Western Kansas.

I only recall fragments of trips back then; a lot of driving with the windows up and both parents smoking which often made me nauseous. My dad had family in Colorado who we visited to ride horses (I was a little bitty thing then, but I rode for a moment), and he also had relatives in Hayes, Kansas. So either of those could have been where we were returning from.

At some point in the early afternoon, we were driving through an arid patch and there was some discussion in the front seat that didn’t sound overly promising to me. We pulled over and we got out of the air conditioned car and stood on hard dirt in the hot sun. I asked my mom why.

She told me something about my dad wanting to go climb a mountain.

There were tall hills and I seem to remember buttes around, and apparently my dad felt the siren’s call of one of them. So we watched my dad head off towards adventure, and finally he disappeared into the distance. He said he wouldn’t be gone long.

I don’t know how long he was out there, but I recall at some point the sun began to sink, and my mom became more and more impatient. Soon she started calling out for him to come back, but of course all she did was make herself hoarse. Finally she just told me to stay there with the car because she was going to go get him.

I was probably 4 at this point, and the distance was too far for me to walk in the heat and too far for her to carry me. So I stood by the car watching my mom disappear into the distance that my dad had already disappeared into.

All alone, in a hot deserted part of Kansas, I stood crying. I eventually started calling for my parents, but I do not recall them coming back. At some point I must have crawled into the back seat and cried myself to sleep.

Fast forward to some point in the late 1970s and my mom and I lived in Independence, Missouri which meant occasional road trips to Nevada Missouri where we had been living until recently. My dad’s mom and grandma lived there, and so did my mom’s parents. We made the long trip down highway 71 quite a lot.

Going out 71, just outside of Butler Missouri, there was this hill. It was a two-level affair to the side of the road. With half the hill, then a plateau, then a steeper part of the hill to the top, it was captivating to me.

I asked my mom frequently if I could get out and go climb it. I was always told no, but I never lost the pure desire to climb it. I felt the hill before we made the curve and it came into view, coming and going. I stared at it as we past it each time.

On August 4, 2012 I was driving back from Nevada in the mid-afternoon. My dad had passed away earlier in the year and my mom had been gone since 2008, and this would be the last time I would drive down to Nevada with any real purpose. I felt the siren calling as I approached the curve. As I rounded the curve, I found myself pulling over and stopping.

I never intended to stop and climb the hill. It never entered my conscious mind. I now found myself preparing to answer the siren’s song.

The experience wasn’t all good. I lost my cell phone somewhere on the hill, and because a Missouri State Trooper had stopped to figure out why my car was sitting to the side of the road and what I was doing on the hillside (a passing trucker had reported a potentially stranded motorist) I ended up falling down the hill and tearing some tendons in my right ankle. Long story.

But the exhilaration of climbing that hill was worth it.

I could not explain why I climbed the hill. People call it a bucket list item and I found that insulting, because I don’t have some list of things I want to accomplish before I die. I didn’t plan this consciously, although apparently I was planning it most of my life subconsciously.

I now see the connection. In a sense, I followed my dad’s path, heeding the seductive song and climbing the hill that called to me. I also set out to find my parents figuratively, something I couldn’t do in 1969. I needed to make the trip, conquer the hill, and prove to myself that I really would be okay, just as my mom said I would.

No other challenges beckon me. I had finally made peace with The Hill.

Faith - All By Myself

When you are single in America, an awful lot of folks think it’s a problem, like there’s something wrong.

Not too long ago, they would have been correct.

“Jim still isn’t married. He’d better hurry up and settle down and start a family.”

“Mary is going to die an old maid at this rate.”

“Dan is a nice guy, but he isn’t even trying to see anyone. Is he… weird?” (Weird often equaled gay)

“Shirley isn’t getting any younger. Pretty soon she’ll be too old to find a nice man.”

(Sound of mother sobbing into a dish towel) “I’m never going to have grandchildren and it’s like he doesn’t even care.”

(Sound of mother grumbling in general directions) “So, when am I going to get a grandchild?”

Ugh. It all makes me sick to even type.

I understood things pretty much that way my whole life. That stupid Life Script that sets your life course in a flow-chart format was not even discussed – it was just handed to me.

Not that anyone could have discussed it with me. It was just understood that you went to school, got a job, found a nice girl, dated, got engaged, got married, had a child or ten, had a grand-child or thirty, retired, and wandered off into the sunset. Some variations existed in my region, but for me the path was instilled in me in various ways as the cultural norm.

Simply put, I really had no choice to stay single. It was not an option.

It is a choice nowadays, more and more. But there are still folks who uphold the basic dogma of the Wrongness of Intentionally Remaining Single. It’s not really their fault; they don’t believe there is a choice either.

So what can be said about singleness? Like everything else, it’s about choices. And as you will discover in life, there are more factors to consider in life choices than it appears.

I’m Afraid of Being Alone

There are some folks who are afraid of being alone. But that is a pretty uncommon phobia. Why do I say that? Because most folks who say they’re afraid of being alone… really aren’t.

Afraid of the dark? No, more likely you’re afraid of what else is in the dark with you, or you’re afraid of the vulnerable feelings you have in the dark. It’s not the dark’s fault.

Afraid of spiders? More likely you’re afraid of the spider biting you, or the emotional response as you feel it crawling on you. Their movements just look so alien to us that they seem, well, creepy.

Afraid of being alone? Probably not. I mean maybe you’re afraid of being vulnerable if someone tries to break in, or afraid of someone already being there when you come home alone one night. A lot of those insecurities lie in not having faith or confidence in yourself and your abilities to handle life events. What if the furnace breaks down, or my car won’t start? It would be so much better if I had someone else around. Maybe so.

But what if your fear or worries about being alone have nothing to do with that?

Maybe you might really hate feeling lonely?

If you think “being alone” is the same as being lonely, then high five! You just figured out where the problem is.

I disliked going through life without a girlfriend. That’s partly because I felt lonely, and partly because I was indoctrinated with the notion that you could not buy a house in Happy Life Estates without being in a relationship.

Plus any people at school and in my neighborhood regularly asserted I was gay, which wasn’t exactly improving the odds I was going to get a girlfriend from among the locals.

Men and women kissing in public, holding hands, doing all the Couples things – seeing all this around me only compounded my feelings of alienation.

Of course I was oblivious to all the people who were single and loving it. I figured they were in denial and as soon as the novelty of being single wore off they would be as miserable as I was.

I was also blind to all the couples who had a partner 24/7 and were way more miserable than I could imagine. I assumed they just made bad decisions and if they had maybe met someone at a park or at a book store, they might be happier today. Or in many cases, maybe they should have just trolled at a more upscale bar. Hey, the quality of the pond gives you a hint to the quality of the fish you’re gonna haul out of it.

Soon I got a girlfriend and had companionship. It satisfied some aspects of my life, but I noticed that others appeared. That’s a pattern in many relationships: smooth at first, then the rocks appear and you wonder what happened.

It all boiled down to expectations. I could not grasp being happy in life as a single person, and I could not grasp why being in a relationship did not instantly fix all my woes. I expected all the wrong things, and that’s what was really making me miserable.

I needed to cultivate faith….

Mom Needs Grandkids!

The Script says that one of the biggest bonuses in having children is one day getting grandchildren.

It’s funny that I remember very few pictures of me, her only child, on my mom’s desk at work over the course of her career. Once grandkids appeared, there was hardly room on the desk for anything BUT their pictures. That gives you an idea of you how important grandchildren figure into the life of a woman round these parts.

See, mom was very busy actually trying to make a living and raise me, so there wasn’t a lot of time to relax and enjoy me. We did have a lot of time and vacations and stuff, don’t get me wrong. But parenthood was very much a job. Grandparenthood is very much a hobby.

After mom retired, she had this huge hole in her life, and grandchildren were going to help fill that nicely. It made her very confused and disheartened to realize after awhile that grandchildren aren’t like the stories. (Wow, neither are husbands and wives! We seriously need to stop reading Happily Ever After stories like they’re roadmaps!)

She adored my sons, and they adored her. But they didn’t just sit quietly and behave like I had as a kid. My kids saw grandma as an awesome playmate that treated them great. But she had respiratory and mobility issues and their constant desire to run around and play wore her out. They were always poking around in things, spilling out boxes to find out what was in them, wanting her to go outside and push them on the swing or catch them at the bottom of a slide 30 times in a row.

Sadly, she wanted to do more and enjoy them more, but her expectations were too high, both for the role of Grandmother and for herself. She couldn’t meet her own expectations and it made her less happy.

She really needed to cultivate some faith….

So When Ya Gonna Tie the Knot?

This will be short and sweet. I know a girl who is beyond wonderful to me. It was assumed we would get married. Probably not now.

Did something bad happen? No actually something good happened: we escaped the bear trap called The Script. It was painful, and I think we had to chew a leg or two off, but it was a relief!

We are happier now that we threw off the expectations and role requirements that were heaped on us throughout time. We can relax and enjoy each others’ company because we aren’t tied to this Institution of Relationship that everyone says will be the road to happiness and personal fulfillment. I mean we tried to fulfill the Script as best we could, but it wasn’t for us. We are happy this way.

But other folks, oh my….

So many of them still live lives according to The Script. That by itself is perfectly fine with me, because as long as everyone is playing by the same rulebook there’s a pretty good chance it will work out for them to some degree.

But to see their faces when they saw us together doing things and being happy, and compare that to the looks on their faces when we dash their fairytale dreams with news that we probably aren’t going to get married: the weight can be suffocating.

Religious teachings, cultural expectations, personal views: so many things can help pile the guilt right on your back when you escape The Script. Suddenly there’s something wrong with you. You are going to anger God and rob everyone you know of the joy of seeing your gleaming golden wedding because you are being selfish and choosing to live lives outside the Right Way.

We’re trying to have our cake and eat it too, I’ve been told.

Let me just say, I’ve taken the plunge and purchased the cake once. If it works for you, go for it. It didn’t meet all the expectations it was supposed to. So I don’t need to. I’m free to get married, but ought of desire to, not out of obligation to.

How can we deal with all the peer pressure and expectations of others?

We just have to cultivate a little faith….

Alone But Not Abandoned

Loneliness is basically when you want someone there and no one’s there. It’s an emotional reaction to unfulfilled desire. Not really sexual desire (although that’s a big part of it at times) but a desire for companionship.

I was nervous when I found someone who I really clicked with on pretty much all cylinders, but discovered that we were at a point in our lives where we just couldn’t handle living on top of each other.

I had to have faith that it was okay.

I needed to have faith that I could live my life separate from someone else by building boundaries, and that was not going to scare away this one person.

I needed faith that I could be single and have a fulfilling life.

I needed to have faith that I was whole and complete as a person without needing another person to make me complete.

I needed to have faith that I could make it… alone.

Now I can go home and have cereal for dinner if I want. I can watch three DVDs of wrestling in a row and not worry that someone in the house is missing her favorite shows. I can leave work and spend the evening walking every aisle in a book store or window shopping at the mall. I can come and go when I please and do what I please. That’s freedom.

And when I get lonely, I can pick up the phone and call or text the most wonderful person in the Multi-verse, and ask if she wants to go to a movie or out to eat or just hang out and walk the aisles or the mall together. That’s also freedom.

I am alone, but I’ve not been abandoned. I don’t need to be attached to someone.

But wait: what if this best friend of mine chooses to go away? (Is it time to sound the Abandonment Alarms?)

It would hurt badly. I would mourn and become unbalanced for awhile. But I have faith that I am still a complete person, I am capable of having a happy and fulfilling life alone. I would still have many friends and no doubt would make many more. I would go on.

My mind used to rob me of peace and erode that faith by dwelling on such an eventuality. I would sit and worry obsessively and compulsively over a potential scenario that was very unlikely. I will not do that anymore. Sure the thoughts occasionally come back, but I will treat them like the guy that comes to the door to ask me if I’ve considered carpeting. I will smile, tell him thank you but no thank you.

“But it’s a great deal.”

“True. But I don’t want carpeting. No deal is so good that I’m going to purchase carpeting if I don’t want it. Free would not put carpeting on my floor.” If I want a relationship I can have one, and if I don’t then that’s cool too. But I don’t NEED one. Believe it or not, the more pressure you put on yourself to get into a relationship because you NEED to, the more likely you will become frustrated and open to making some erroneous choices.

I have a choice as to how I will deal with facing things that make me uncomfortable, including loneliness. I can sit and lament or I can get up and go somewhere.

 “But I don’t want to go somewhere alone. It makes me lonelier.”

Loneliness is an emotional reaction to a situation. Believe it or not, you can change that reaction. No really, you can! It might mean you just have to change your expectations a little….

As I said earlier, one of the main issues that contribute a bit towards loneliness (and certainly one of the biggest arenas of expectation in a relationship) is: sex.

Don’t get all excited (oops, sorry), but we’re going to look at this topic next. Relationships and sexual expectations, and how Mindfulness can help balance that out. No kissing and telling; I promise, I won't get inappropriate.

C’mon, have a little faith.