Member-only story
I met the girl of my dreams when I was eleven, or so I thought. It turns out her family didn’t consider me good marriage material. All these years later, I look back at my relationship track record. I did get married, and it fell apart after ten years. I immediately took up with another woman, thinking I had found the right one, which didn’t work out, either. I married my work, and eventually, that marriage ended, and I retired.
I retired to a small seaside town where I didn’t know anyone. Though I frequently visited the town over the years, I never established any friendships. So I set about meeting folks, but I couldn’t find the right fit. I checked out writing groups, a local storytelling guild, and a psychedelic society. I took on some coaching on the side, started a couple of creative and fun clubs that fizzled out. Then, when the pandemic lay over the land, my already socially diminished world shrank down to me. Thank god my pub reopened. But, even that marriage, gathering with pub mates, changed. I slowly retreated from conversational threads as I couldn’t follow them nor figure out how to fit into them.
Though I got used to not having a significant other some time ago, I was unprepared to have no conversation. Conceptually, I understand that this loneliness is a price I pay to craft my inner metaverse into stories. It’s repression reversal work, the cataclysmic ShakeOut, and the release of inner holding patterns. I’ve not found many people who speak that language.
