Trust Me, You're Alive

On Friday I went to a nice restaurant a little far from the usual spots in familiar neighborhoods. They had a dance floor, it was 2000s night, so we danced to Low and Toxic and Poker Face till midnight. When I returned home, the endorphins still left me feeling high but I had this gnawing empty feeling inside.

I’m 31. I grew up watching movies where the young protagonist drinks/dances nights away with friends but feels empty inside when they come back to their apartment, set up to later embark on a soul-searching phase. For almost all of my adult life, I have prioritized staying grounded, having learned the lesson early that I could crash land one day otherwise. It’s helped that I always felt a strong sense of identity.

And I have lived alone in apartments for almost three years now, and prior to that with roommates for four. During all this time, when I’ve come home, I’ve felt like returning to my own. I’ve felt safe and whole, a whole I’m fully aware of inside-out. 

On Friday night (or Saturday early morning shall we say), I was lost. I had met some new people and some old, I would meet some of them again the next day and Saturday was packed with errands and events to get to, with some reading at the library in between. To me, this checks most of the boxes of a good weekend. So what was wrong?

(I still don’t know for sure what’s wrong if you’re hoping for an answer by the end of this post.)

I think it’s a medley of reasons, but I’m only guessing.
One is the obvious single hood, the running theme of my blog (and life). But I have come to terms with this though so while an obvious contributor, I don’t think it’s a major one.

I haven’t travelled home in more than a year. I think that’s definitely adding up. 
I’m missing my best friends, none of whom are on the same coast as me now, and most of them are in a different continent, time zones away. I haven’t met them in more than a year. I’m missing my family too, obviously. 
I would say the fact that I’m still not fully healed from an ankle-flare up a month ago might add to it, except I attended a class last week and caught up with my friends from dance class. I don’t think that’s it either.

The fact that I haven’t published anything in a while has definitely been weighing on me. I have two drafts I’ve been working on, (one spawned as spillover thoughts from the other), rather slowly, and the paralysis of perfectionism has surely been impeding progress. At the library or at home I read and read, I close the book or magazine or fold the newspaper back, my mind exploding with ideas and thoughts and ruminations. 

I park these and drive home, or go out with a friend, or pick up groceries for a new recipe, or make a list of to-do’s. The thoughts I never get back to. They stay forgotten, and if you ask me what I read yesterday at the library, I couldn’t tell you rightaway. I was trying to remember earlier this evening during a break, and I simply couldn’t remember.

And I think this is why I feel empty, maybe? I feel at my most real self when I have clarity of thought, and I have simply pushed that aside to cater to the extrovert-side of me that has gathered hold in the last couple of years. I do not know yet if it’s a tragedy in the big picture of my life, but I know it has been an enticing, thoroughly hedonistic ride so far, to the extent that it has almost overtaken my life?

I haven’t learned how to find a balance yet, unlike those characters in the movies, maybe because their story usually ends where I started, I think? I was an introvert when I began so this transition has driven me [almost] nuts, with no references to go by. Any pointers are welcome.

I am sure it’s also at least partially because my location is incongruent to my relationships, like I said. They say relationships are the most important thing in a person’s life [I don’t disagree] so I’d like to offer credit, in case it’s due. The people I spend time with here in Atlanta, while some of them are lovely people, I long for physical proximity to my intimate friendships. The kind not carefully softened by polite small talk, the kind with minimal if any filters.

Also, fall weather is here and I no longer wake up to the music of birds chirping since I shut my bedroom windows. It sucks. So to summarize, summer leaving = empty inside?