Life without Love

Am I alone feeling like I can hardly exist without love?

I miss those days when I didn't have to fight to feel like I belonged to something. And though it was only a tenth of what I thought I wanted, feeling wholly unattached to anything concrete now is far more miserable. I'd trade adequate for miserable in a second. Because right now, I feel like I'm drowning, like I can hardly keep my head above the water. And I'm not depressed like I was last fall. I'm not unhappy with the direction my life is taking like I was for so many years. But I feel like all this good is unsupported. Like I built a house with the most expensive doors and windows and appliances and tiles and solar panels and gardens and hardwood floors...except I built it on sand. And I think about the past ten years, and I realize now that I had the cement foundation, I just didn't have all the accoutrements.

I had a foundation.
I had a foundation.
I gave it up for everything else.

And was that the right thing to do? Am I regretful? I want to say no. I want to say that the past decade was a time for me to learn and grow and understand myself. I want to say that I never think about when I sat in that recliner chair in Lewiston and read until I fell asleep at 2 in the afternoon because I had no professional outlet and nothing to stimulate me and wanted nothing more than to get the hell out of there...but how Jack and Rocky made everything easier. How I knew that I wasn't going to be alone at the end of the day. How I knew that no matter how frustrated I was with romance and professional rejection and the mediocrity, that I was not going to be alone at the end of the day. I do think about it. I think about it every day. Because now I'm sitting in my bed. It's the end of the day. And I'm alone. I am wholly and utterly alone. And I feel the sand shifting under my house.