In the past few weeks, I have been isolating. Not only isolating, but fantasizing about a trip alone, abroad, where I might even isolate further. I’ve searched land.com for vacant land to pull Wild Thing to and be in the middle of a forest to retreat. I’ve looked at flying to Mexico City and Puerto Rico to be immersed in a Spanish speaking environment – to walk the streets and sit in a cafe or even my hotel room alone. A Puerto Rican friend said, stay with me, and I replied, I really need to be alone right now.
In my ACA meeting Tuesday night, we talked about isolation – it’s one of the coping mechanisms of adult children of alcoholics. And I know when I’m taking it too far – but this time I’m just relishing it a little much, this aloneness is where I feel very content – perhaps too content – and still, I wonder, am I wrong?
Is this a problem?
I have spent the last days wondering. I was in an enmeshed family until I was 18, and then I was married nearly 99% of the years between 20 and 50 years old. I entered a live-in relationship before my 50th birthday, where I said to myself there are going to be no exit signs this time. I said I will stay in this relationship and work it out and so from the second day in, when I was being lied to by this person I call La Bruja, I kept the exits sealed shut, and when La Bruja glommed onto all the surfaces in my life – (the LaLa, my dream house on Bayou St. John, my favorite chair, my side of the bed, my journey to adoption, even my love of pelicans) – I didn’t listen to a close friend who warned me she was no good, I didn’t listen to my gut that told me to get out, I stayed without looking at the exits and did not even glance for a way out.
Two years later, I was beyond done with this ill-conceived plan and the exit signs burned in my vision. During those two years, I had been lied to, manipulated, pinched, slapped, gaslighted, used, overwhelmed, taken advantage of – I’d seen my young son shaken, pinched, yelled at for having nightmares, abandoned over and over again – and I had had ENOUGH. Those exit signs – what was I thinking? I was thinking about all those times I had left and wondered if I should have stayed. I’d wondered for too long about the loving men I might have stayed with but didn’t. I did not trust myself enough then to know that all those times I had left – I had my reasons. And they were good enough.
Lord Today!
It’s a pattern of always leaving, even places where I call home, albeit I do not blame my parents as much as their proclivity to move constantly for why staying in one place also seems elusive. I have lived all over the place, in and out of the country growing up, and the leaving had always been sudden, so much so that when I first lived in a flat in San Francisco for five years – which had been my longest residency – I freaked when my husband and I moved. In 2018, I came to Bay Saint Louis as a landing place, I had to get out of New Orleans, I had to get my son out, and now I’ve been here almost eight years, a record breaker.
I never knew how to ask for my solitude when I was paired up, until it was robbed from me during my stint with La Bruja. I learned from trying to stay that I should listen to myself and not ideas like no exits – something I had read in someone else’s self-help book. In my imaginings, I’m staying and finding connection, but I know enough now to follow my spirit and not my plans.
I seek company so carefully, selectively, and still not a lot. Even when settling in, I’ve dreamed of where I might go next, and so far, nothing has revealed itself. I love my small community of friends and this small town and maybe my fantasies of travel and moving to far-away places is only that, a fantasy for right now. Then again, I’m okay with being true to who I am, to being someone who is always leaving.
