My Singlutionary Admiration

I have an admirer and I like it.

Most of the admiration that I have received in my life was not really all that welcome. As a young teenager I was building a set for a Shakespeare play I was performing in when I heard a noise. I looked up and right on the other side of the fence was a man masturbating while staring at me. I was 13. Granted, we were building the set on the grounds of a mental institution but this guy was NOT locked up. He was one of the ones who was free to range and had a pass into the real world on Saturdays. I tried to tell my hot 20 year old co-actor about it but I stalled when I came to the masturbation part. I didn't know which words to use. I was so embarrassed. And while I had a deep puppy love crush on the hot 20 year old male co star, he was so freaked out by having to kiss with me in the play that he could hardly stand talking to me for more than 1 minute. During that summer he hooked up with an opera singer his own mothers age and then freaked out when he found out how old she was. But that is another story entirely.

After high school I gained a lot of weight and for most of my adult life I've been a little plump. When I began slimming down, I realized that I didn't want to be slender again. The extra weight had reduced the cat calls, the guys driving by in their cars doing the blow job hand motion and the dopey sweet-but-annoying types who used to follow me around campus like little puppies talking about their Dungeons and Dragons victories. Being heavy also made me -- literally -- harder to move. Shortly after college I had been walking in my own neighborhood (the one I grew up in) and had been suddenly grabbed in a bear hug by some guy. I started yelling but nobody on this quiet residential street took any notice or came to my defense. I did yell loud enough to startle him into letting go. I ran across the street where a neighbor boy was sitting on the front steps. He seemed unconcerned and seemed annoyed that I was bothering him when I explained to him what had happened. Since I wasn't getting any sympathy or offers to walk me back to my house, I decided to just make a run for it although I was sure the man was still watching me from the shadows. The man grabbed me again in my own driveway at which time my parents heard my screaming and came to my rescue. He fled. None of the neighbors ever inquired as to my well being although they must have heard me screaming. Did they think I was just mentally imbalanced? At the time there was another Shakespeare actor staying at my parent's house. He was completely uncomfortable with witnessing this experience, said it was just like "West Side Story" (huh?) and went out with (common) friends and didn't invite me. I hate my hometown but that is another story entirely.

So, you can see why I've never really thought much of being admired. Aside from perverts, I've been also admired by men and women for all the wrong reasons, for reasons that had little to do with me: I had a car, was educated, was a liberal, was an activist, wasn't an activist, didn't smoke pot, was educated by hippies, had a swing set, knew how to use email, knew so-and-so, had long hair, had short hair, liked hiking, wasn't their girlfriend, etc. 

Admiration sucked. 

Until now. 

At the new job I have a few admirers. There are many people who live at the apartment complex where I work who are sane and interesting. There are also the Dungeons and Dragon types but as they've matured they've picked up other topics of conversation with which to impress the ladies. And there are a few harmless nut jobs. 

My new admirers are cute. They're smart and not socially disabled and they will come into the office to talk. They come by now more than they did before and that was my first hint that they have little crushes on me. I have one in particular who is my favorite. He knows how to fix cars and doesn't talk down to me because I'm female. So I get to talk about cars and straw bale houses and alternative fuel sources with him and he talks to me like, well, a peer. Its good to be admired by respectable folk. And its good to be admired for the right reasons and to have someone see value in me beyond what I can give them. Its good to be respected AND admired. And its a new experience for me, in a way. I'm soaking it up. I never thought admiration could be so light hearted and simple. But this is. And at this moment, it is absolutely perfect.

This new experience is a result of becoming Singlutionary. Being entirely satisfied with my single life has resulted in a new confidence. Crazy people leave me alone because I am untouchable; I want for nothing. And folks who are also Singlutionary seem to recognize their own. How wonderful is it to find Singlutionary friends in my offline life as well as in my virtual one?

My Personal Singlution

Before I started this blog in January of this year, I had spent the 10 months prior in my own personal hell. It was a hell of transformation and while I did not survive unscathed, I did survive it.

I'm not a religious person but I am a faithful one and I put a lot of my hopes and dreams into things I can't see or touch. I have faith that I am doing the right thing, that I will be led in the right direction, that people are inherently good and seek to do good. I had faith in my pursuit of an acting career, in starting over in a new city, in saving trees, in telling stories through film, in my friends which I consider my family. Before last year, I'd lost faith in various causes, organization, processes (the government, for example) but never had a loss of faith cut so deep to the core of who I am. What was this crisis or crises? What is the story that led to the Singlution? There is no way in heck that I am able to recount that hell in a mere blog post. But what I can say is this:

I am a different person than I was a year and a half ago. I am a different woman than I EVER was. People keep growing and changing in tiny ways all the time but if you've ever experienced an avalanche in your life you'll know what it is to wake up one day and not know who you are. 

For many days I woke up and I couldn't recognize myself. Who was I without my sister? Who was I without my best friend? And what had happened to the man that I truly truly thought I was going to marry and had already sacrificed many aspects of myself for? And worst of all, what was I going to do with my life if I wasn't going to be an actor anymore? What was my calling and why did the calling that I had placed so much faith in seem to leave me high and dry? Why was I exhausted? Where was my enthusiasm and joy? What had happened to my youth?

These days I wake up and I've gotten used to the new me. I still feel heavier than I used to (both in my body and in my soul) but I know that in time that heaviness will transform into groundedness and I'll be back to my sprite-like ways. 

Tonight, I socialized for the first time since I became the Singlutionary and started writing this blog (at which time I finally began to understand the post-crisis me). I didn't think of this evening as a test in any way: I just knew that I had things on my calendar which I had committed to doing despite feeling rather ambiguous about them (as I do with most public interactions these days). If this evening were a test, however, I passed with flying colors which means is that I am getting confident in my own skin again, that I have gotten to know myself well enough to stand on my own two feet and not shake in my boots.

I attended two functions tonight. The first one you can read about below. The second one will have to wait for another post.

Function 1: A friend's birthday party. This friend actually lives in my neighborhood but we rarely see each other. We met through a group I led when I was still a realtor and our main common ground is environmentalism, mainly personal sustainability (not using throw away stuff, composting, recycling, etc). Little was I to know that there were three tests waiting for me at this event:

Test 1: Being surrounded by enviro people and not feeling alienated. 

I used to be a pretty hard core environmentalist. And then I lost faith in environmentalism. I still am an environmentalist except I no longer wear my green on my sleeve. I ignore a lot of bad things that go on in the world and try and do my best but I accept that I am a human being and that other people breathing and eating and farting on this earth are human beings as well. But the super-earth-conscious-crunchy-granola-activist community used to be MY community. I used to be one of them. And I'm not anymore. I always looked a little mainstream so sometimes I would see real hippies quietly passing judgement on me because I wasn't patchouli smelling enough to really understand. Oftentimes recently I've passed judgement on liberal enviro folks for what I consider to be uber-negative/never-good-enough thinking. 

There were plenty of moments tonight when I could have felt frustrated or where I could have passed judgement and thought "that kind of alienating attitude is what is holding us back". But instead I just thought: "Gosh, its good to be back with my people, hearing them talk about these things. Its good to remember those times and to know that this community still exists and that I am still here on the periphery of it. I enjoy the periphery."

Test Two: Sizing up Skinny Enviro Landscaper and then Letting Him Go

When I was more at the center of the environmentalist community, I was always trying to find a fellow treehugger for a mate. I thought we could get together and hug a tree so hard that we would conceive and give birth to our own tree offspring and be a true forest family. I was desperate to find someone who loved the earth as much as I did. And I acted crazy because of it. I let lots of hippie artist types freeload off my spirit, my money, my time all because I so desperately needed to be loved and acknowledged by the activist world. Anytime I met a guy who was single and who was an activist I fell in love with him. And they never liked me, never were interested in committing to me. The thing about activism is that it has its own culture of stars and status and since my job put me close to these heroes at the center, other people wanted to be close to me because through me, they could get access to these treehugging stars. Once, I thought this giant peace dove making artist was going to confess his love to me but instead he confessed his love of my boss to me. Lets just say that I never need to have that experience again. 

Tonight, when I found myself talking to a young-ish/seemingly unattached/possibly straight eco landscaper my old habits came back to me. I started sizing him up, trying to figure out if he might/possibly/maybe be interested in me, etc. And then I took a step back, looked at myself and laughed. What did I want with this skinny landscaper with bad posture who drinks smoothies every day and waxes on about the detriments of compostable disposable cups. Nothing. Nothing aside from pleasant conversation which for me was entirely nostalgic and enjoyable in-so-far that it never happen again. 

Test Three: Seeing the guy-I-though-was-bi (and was just plain ole gay).

I had an uber crush on this man when I first moved to this town. He looked like Jeff Goldblum. He was the interior designer for a restaurant I was working at and although years my senior, he was an artist (ahem. dysfunctional freeloader) and he could relate to me (ahem. immature). Anyways, I saw this guy come in and recognized him but at first I couldn't really put my finger on it. I thought he had skipped town or got sent to jail for a longer stint so I needed to be convinced that it was really him. He'd also aged in three years from looking 45ish to looking 50ish. And he is still hot and still charming and still throws off my gaydar completely.

In the past, I would have felt so humiliated by my previous attraction to this man and equally so angry at him for being such a self-centered dysfunctional in my life. But instead I was entertained. I doubted that he would recognize me and if he did I wasn't afraid to interact with him. But I did enjoy observing him and trying to see what clues I missed, not to his sexual orientation, but to his level of sanity/functioning. I decided to size him up and see what I saw in him now that I'm older and wiser. Conclusion: I can't blame myself for being attracted to him. But the red flag was in his posture. He is very tall, so its hard to notice but he betrays his confidence outward charm by a certain crookedness in the way he walks. Note to self: Start noticing posture when sizing up sanity levels in strangers.

So an event that could have beaten the stuffing out of me merely sent me home with several light observations which, although based on where I've been, should serve me well wherever I am going.