I have this dream of just being alone again for extended periods of time. Maybe going on a writing retreat in a cabin in the woods, or sitting in silence for 100+ hours at another Vipassana retreat, or just noodling around my house with an excess of time to read books or watch movies or leaf through the magazines that are currently piling up beside the sofa. In my work, I miss having the time to waffle, to explore ideas – maybe even the bad ones! All of these behaviors that used to evoke a feeling of self-hatred when they would (inevitably) appear, it’s like I now I find myself missing the naivety of it all: the ability to be irresponsible and inefficient and aimless and meandering.
Because the problem is now there is this human who is currently tiny but one day will be a 6-year-old and then a teenager and then an adult woman which just blows my mind, and now that she exists, I find myself wanting to be with her above all else.
It’s as if the dream of extended aloneness is lingering somewhere in the ether, the dream of a past life. Some days it feels like something I’d kill for! But in reality, if it were offered to me? I’d have to pass.
This I know, because it is my current reality.
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