Meandering through moldy cheese: on loneliness and being a hermit

When I am not writing, I get a little funky kind of like soured milk or a moldy cheese you wouldn’t eat. When I am not blogging, it is often true that I am not writing. However, it wells up inside of me that at this minute I must write or I will explode or go more sour or grow more mold or be stale. Writing is an extension of who I am. I am learning that it is part of the essence of me. It seems weird to only just figure this out at 36, but I am. Today, I will be meandering through moldy cheese: on loneliness and being a hermit.

I told Daniel the other day that I couldn’t stop writing like I can’t stop thinking deep thoughts. He knew it to be true before I did, accepting me for me when I am often trying to fit myself into the jello mold of the day.

Oddly, it seems as though I need to know that someone else will read for me to actually write my thoughts, like a voyeur, but the performer instead. So today, I write to process. I’m not writing about Christmas or necessarily to you, my readers, excepting that you just want to know my mind a bit more, as I peel back the layers of my thoughts and figure out what is hidden in my mind. I think most writers write to open a window to their soul when the avenue might be otherwise closed. While I want to be edifying in an Ann Voskamp type of way, today I’ll write without a conclusion in mind.

I mentioned that I am a highly sensitive person. One thing that has been mentally tormenting me is the balance between throwing yourself out into the world and reigning yourself back in into your inner sanctum of your home or safety zone. Much of my life, well, at least since my college days, I have thrown caution to the wind (not in normal terms, but in sensitive person terms), and I have done a lot of putting myself out there type things. Blogging, missions, going to sunday school classes outside my social norm, going to women’s events, speaking at a women’s event, room mom. I have been given a holy courage to accomplish things I could never have done in the past. I am a new person as a result, but in this year of shmita, I have been feeling like becoming a hermit and being done with the whole not caring for myself and putting myself out there thing. Like swaying from one side to the other. I don’t necessary want to do that, but I feel I am in an awkward place in life. I guess I always feel this way, but I have so few “close” relationships that no one would miss me if I just decided to never leave my home.

I went to get a haircut today and at the risk of offending my stylist, I will mention part of our conversation. She mentioned someone I know, and I said that we were friends, and she said, “more like acquaintances,” and I said yes. The thing is right now most of my relationships are more like acquaintances. Tonight several women that I know are gathered together to swap cookies at a friend’s house. I didn’t bring myself to go, because we’ve since left that sunday school class, and while I was invited, I am not up to facing that awkwardness. I was in the class for so many years, and it seems like I’ve come and gone and no one has even noticed. I feel like I am the awkward in between as I still don’t know the women in my new class well. I am lonely, but it’s a different kind of lonely than in the past. It’s the kind where I’d rather be lonely than vulnerable with anyone else. I am not great at relationships. This whole blog post feels like a conversation I should have with a good friend, but I don’t know who I would call to tell it to – only my husband. He listens, but he is not a woman. He doesn’t offer advise or make me feel like I am not alone, like he empathizes and understands.

My sister complains that I don’t communicate with her. It is true; we’ve stopped talking much on the phone. It seems I’ve forgotten the art of friendship and sisterliness. No one really asks how I am, and if or when they do, I am so surprised that I fail to answer them in the moment, or I just don’t say. I am too sensitive to be hard-hearted, but I am afraid I appear cold and calloused to others. The truth is I am too afraid of being hurt and squashed and my hopes dashed on rocks of insecurity and inadequacy.

I don’t communicate well – weird I know for a writer to say. This morning I was panicking about my health, and wanted to tell it to facebook, but I’ve become fairly well at self censoring my posts. I know – I just found out that facebook records all that I type but don’t post, which means the company could probably write a book about me just based on these undisclosed things I’ve typed and then decided I better not say. I say a lot so can you imagine what I don’t say?

Speaking of hair, no one thinks I would be the kind of girl to wear funky hair – you know a chunk of blue or pink or whatever. People say I am sweet, and it’s a title that I hesitate to say I’ve grown tired of. I went to the makeup counter today. I’ve been seeing people wear bold bright colored eyeliner and I mentioned trying it, and the girl so didn’t think I was the type to be able to do it. I like color. I wanna be funky in a fun colorful way, not a moldy cheese sorta way. I am more than just “sweet,” I am a little bold too.

Who am I and what am I supposed to do with my life are not questions I thought I would be answering at this age. I feel like I am on the precipice of figuring this out, but I feel quiet, hermitish, and lonely but not a bereaved lonely, just a realization that I am such a mess and it seems easier to quietly admit this on a blog than confess it to a real live person. I expect Emily Dickinson would understand.

“This is my letter to the world that never wrote to me.” -Emily Dickinson, (although I think she spoke of nature)

Of course, I am the kind of hermit that still goes to sunday school, the hair salon, and the makeup counter, but I suspect I am not the only one who is this kind of hermit – lost in her protective shell.

Loneliness it seems is, apart from Jesus, my oldest friend. Instead of pushing her away as I so often have done, I embrace her, for she encourages me to write. Write softly. Write boldly. Write so that others can know what I am thinking when I otherwise don’t know how to bridge the gap. As is usually the case when I write, perhaps now some of the funk is gone and maybe my soul is less moldy and more holy instead. We will never be lovers, loneliness and I, but we are more than mere acquaintances. Loneliness pushes me into the hands of the One who made me, and for that, I am forever grateful.