The Cavity of My Loneliness
Share this Post:
Photo generated with Adobe Firefly.
I have gotten quite good at filling — or more honestly, wasting — my time in retirement. When I’m bored, aimless, and not feeling great about my latest ache, pain, or restless night’s sleep.
I can re-watch episode three of Heated Rivalry (the one featuring Scott Hunter/actor Francois Arnaud, who is my main crush at the moment), and though I eschew most reality TV, Love is Blind. Truth be told I’m a romantic and even though many of the contestants seem to have the emotional intelligence of a fruit fly, the show – the hunt for love (sight unseen) and the quest for the special one I have never found – is oddly compelling. But even when I’m watching quality television, like Masterpiece on PBS, I still feel guilty for spending my evenings laid out on a couch when I could be doing something more productive, like writing.
My couch is my home ground, the place I come back to, my refuge. I am used to its soft presence in my living room, and what it represents — the safe, familiar, the known. I have my routines, my favorite positions, one of which is lying prone on my blue and white striped sofa, its overstuffed cushions worn to the contours of my form, dented from twenty years of use.
TV, movies, doomscrolling on my iPhone, soaking up the endless chaos of Trump 2.0, all serve as distractions from my current reality at 69 — it’s just me and Stanley, and he is stealthy, affectionate in small doses, inscrutable as only a feline can be. Stanley is 10, a ginger and white shorthair, a blend of fur and muscle, an almost silent companion who loves me when I feed him, and now, in middle age, spends most of his time sleeping or eating.
Stanley, unlike me, does not obsess about being productive, is not concerned with his inactivity. He lives in the moment; when he’s well-fed and warmed by the sun that streams into my apartment, life is good, all is well.
Today, after years, decades, half a century of being single and forty years of living alone, I should be used to a solitary life. I am after all, a writer, and putting words on paper is not a group activity. Now that I have long, free days in retirement, I could always write. But filling hours with words and having something tangible to show for my efforts sounds appealing, until I actually sit down to do it. Then, it becomes as appetizing as a trip to the dentist, poking and probing into the cavity of my loneliness.
I’m envious of my friends who write fiction, who create alternate realities, characters, dramatic scenes and resolutions. They can escape into fantasy, building new families, tribes, entire worlds in which we are not ruled by an amoral narcissist but perhaps a benevolent queen, a wizard, a gay superhero.
Unfortunately, I do not have the imagination to make things up. I’m limited by the reality of my own life, one that featured a chaotic childhood, two major accidents, (hit by a car, scarred by a fish tank), and four decades of depression; though I’ve let that identity go — it no longer defines me.
So I, like Dorothy Parker, hate writing, but love having written. Or maybe I, like she, exaggerate. I do not hate writing per se, but rather the resistance, the angst, the sturm und drang that goes along with it.
Why do I resist the words, the work, the process of getting my thoughts down on paper?
Eventually, I rouse myself, get up off the couch, and get to work. No one will accuse me of being prolific. My three books are mini-memoirs; I call them “memoirettes.”
Still, the work flows through me and I step back and admire the finished product, like a sculptor who finds the figure in a block of marble. I must remember this feeling, I think, must wrap my spindly fingers around this sensation and hold on for dear life. I love writing in this moment; I do not love my couch.
Judah Leblang is a writer, teacher, and storyteller in Boston. He will be performing his one-man show, “It’s Now or Never: My Life in the Late Middle Ages” at Lehrhaus Café in Somerville on Thursday April 23 at 8 pm. Find out more at: https://events.humanitix.com/it-s-now-or-never-my-life-in-the-middle-ages-a-one-man-show/tickets
I can re-watch episode three of Heated Rivalry (the one featuring Scott Hunter/actor Francois Arnaud, who is my main crush at the moment), and though I eschew most reality TV, Love is Blind. Truth be told I’m a romantic and even though many of the contestants seem to have the emotional intelligence of a fruit fly, the show – the hunt for love (sight unseen) and the quest for the special one I have never found – is oddly compelling. But even when I’m watching quality television, like Masterpiece on PBS, I still feel guilty for spending my evenings laid out on a couch when I could be doing something more productive, like writing.
My couch is my home ground, the place I come back to, my refuge. I am used to its soft presence in my living room, and what it represents — the safe, familiar, the known. I have my routines, my favorite positions, one of which is lying prone on my blue and white striped sofa, its overstuffed cushions worn to the contours of my form, dented from twenty years of use.
TV, movies, doomscrolling on my iPhone, soaking up the endless chaos of Trump 2.0, all serve as distractions from my current reality at 69 — it’s just me and Stanley, and he is stealthy, affectionate in small doses, inscrutable as only a feline can be. Stanley is 10, a ginger and white shorthair, a blend of fur and muscle, an almost silent companion who loves me when I feed him, and now, in middle age, spends most of his time sleeping or eating.
Stanley, unlike me, does not obsess about being productive, is not concerned with his inactivity. He lives in the moment; when he’s well-fed and warmed by the sun that streams into my apartment, life is good, all is well.
Today, after years, decades, half a century of being single and forty years of living alone, I should be used to a solitary life. I am after all, a writer, and putting words on paper is not a group activity. Now that I have long, free days in retirement, I could always write. But filling hours with words and having something tangible to show for my efforts sounds appealing, until I actually sit down to do it. Then, it becomes as appetizing as a trip to the dentist, poking and probing into the cavity of my loneliness.
I’m envious of my friends who write fiction, who create alternate realities, characters, dramatic scenes and resolutions. They can escape into fantasy, building new families, tribes, entire worlds in which we are not ruled by an amoral narcissist but perhaps a benevolent queen, a wizard, a gay superhero.
Unfortunately, I do not have the imagination to make things up. I’m limited by the reality of my own life, one that featured a chaotic childhood, two major accidents, (hit by a car, scarred by a fish tank), and four decades of depression; though I’ve let that identity go — it no longer defines me.
So I, like Dorothy Parker, hate writing, but love having written. Or maybe I, like she, exaggerate. I do not hate writing per se, but rather the resistance, the angst, the sturm und drang that goes along with it.
Why do I resist the words, the work, the process of getting my thoughts down on paper?
Eventually, I rouse myself, get up off the couch, and get to work. No one will accuse me of being prolific. My three books are mini-memoirs; I call them “memoirettes.”
Still, the work flows through me and I step back and admire the finished product, like a sculptor who finds the figure in a block of marble. I must remember this feeling, I think, must wrap my spindly fingers around this sensation and hold on for dear life. I love writing in this moment; I do not love my couch.
Judah Leblang is a writer, teacher, and storyteller in Boston. He will be performing his one-man show, “It’s Now or Never: My Life in the Late Middle Ages” at Lehrhaus Café in Somerville on Thursday April 23 at 8 pm. Find out more at: https://events.humanitix.com/it-s-now-or-never-my-life-in-the-middle-ages-a-one-man-show/tickets
