Home alone

A week of revelations

Mine has been no slippery slope, more like a free fall into the depths of hell.

How could one middle-aged woman go from “Boy oh boy! Seven glorious days of being alone at home” to “I am so happy my children are not witnessing my downfall” in just under a week?

Saturday

I start my week of wonder with a manicure. Nothing says “Queen of her time” like a fresh coat of red. I cook a healthy lunch AND dinner. I even throw in a little studying. I’m killing it.

Sunday

Go out for a run; this house is definitely too small when it is too empty. Let’s run 10k. Actually, there is no hurry; let’s make it 14K, just so I don’t have to go back home too soon.

Set up my desk to study. I feel like it is now a fire hazard, what with all the candles I lit up. It feels like a romantic homework session with myself. Got to buy more candles, these things burn fast.

Monday

Attend a networking event. A room full of middle-aged women desperately looking for jobs, seeking to contribute to a society that seems to see no value in their expertise. On the stage, a twenty-something, perky, energetic girl who seems to be the gatekeeper of the CV entry door. She is nice enough, I cannot help but feel a deeply ingrained disdain for her. Never have I felt so unremarkable in my life. I cry on the train ride back home.

I go to cut my hair and then sit in a restaurant/bodega-type place to have pizza on my own. C is not sending me any pics. Are they having such a good time they already forgot me? As I walk back home, mentally calculating the amount of carbs I have lined my stomach with and trying to figure out if the tomato sauce in the pizza counts towards my five-a-day, my body itches from the haircut.

I open the door and Morris greets me like he is in heat, albeit thoroughly castrated, just because he is hungry. I will accept this Judas kiss over nothing any day of the week. “You little prostitute, you”, I whisper lovingly while stroking him. He steps away, and I know he is thinking, “Cut the crap woman, where is my food?”

I have a hot shower and change the bed linens. Let’s pretend I am at a hotel. I might feel less lonely then.

I remember a patient who just last week said to me, “I like that you are my doctor. I do not need pity, Ana; I need solutions and answers I can understand, and you give me those.”

What do you know? Most of my patients seem to appreciate my methods of delivering the goods. My way of saying, “I see you are struggling. I might not be able to fix it 100%, and you will have to put in some hard work. It could be that this is your new normal, and that your expectations are unrealistic. But let’s see, if you tell me exactly what the problem is, if I ask you some incisive questions, I might have a better picture and see what we have in our tool kit to offer you.”

I cry some more. How can I write “I solve problems” in my CV?

I text my friends who live in the vicinity. A hears my pain and invites me to her house on Friday to paint her walls, drink some wine and feel uniquely loved. I need to exorcise my blankness with a bucket full of white paint and a bottle full of white wine.

Tuesday

Went to meet a person who did the same transition (kind of) that I am looking into. They were very informative and genuinely kind. I leave the building with this need to cry that comes out of nowhere. I walk to my dream job place, trying to manifest God knows what. I spend the trip back home crying some more.

I prepare a bowl of pop-corn for dinner. Corn definitely counts as a veggie, plus, I keep hydrated with a big jug of water. Health is my middle name. Binge-watch Hercule Poirot the rest of the evening. I can scarcely make out the grainy figures through my tears. I am sure Hercule would understand me. And if he didn’t, he would never commiserate. Commiseration feels like a slap on the face. I need solutions, not looks of pity, motherfuckers¹.

I feel dizzy, like the air is thin. It could be that all the candles are sucking out the oxygen from my living room.

Wednesday

Although I am on holiday I have a couple of online meetings and nothing smart to say. I feel irrelevant for three days in a row, a new low for me.

I go running—5K in the freezing wind. The insides of my ears are painful. The outside of my ears, numb. It could be that they just drop off. Would I miss them? Could I pull off a bob that doesn’t let people notice I have no ears? My stream of consciousness is breaking the banks and flooding everything else.

Ironically enough, when I get back I hear my homeland is literally drowning. One hundred and fifty dead from the flash floods and counting. That puts a stop to my bullshit. Everyone is safe at home; my cousin had to be rescued from her car on her way back from work, but she is fine. So many things to be thankful for.

I binge-watch some YouTube. I learn that fillers do not dissolve, just migrate, giving you a “medical” condition called pillow-face. Also, chronic botox injection atrophies your facial muscles so that your face droops making you look even older. It turns out that the average Jane doesn’t know that Botox is the brand name for a neurotoxin that is, in fact, deadly. I reflect on how the only thing that keeps you young is death. What keeps you agile, on the other hand, is reading and weight lifting. I do squats for one more minute, just for good measure.

I cannot help but consider the elasticity of time. How 20 minutes of studying feels like aeons, but two hours going down a rabbit hole of botched fillers feels like an instant.

M invites me for dinner. I cycle to her house, in the middle of nowhere. As I stand in the dark forest (literally) trying to decide left or right from my google maps, I realise that all of this is such a wonderful analogy of my mental status right now. I reach her house, there is warm food, and warmer conversation. Friendship is the salt of life. I cylce back home, reluctantly.

I post a cryptic message on Substack and now the world thinks I do drugs while home alone. In all honesty, I would not even know where to purchase illegal substances that make one escape one’s reality. Truth be told, I would not mind escaping mine right now.

Thursday (All Hallows Eve)

I face time with the children². They are totally psyched with their Halloween costumes. Joy is to be found everywhere, even in dread and death… not in this empty house, though. Should I get me some dread to accompany my despair?

The post arrives. It seems I have a certified letter to collect. Perfect, I was on my way out to get some pizza for lunch. Now that I have decided that the strawberry-flavoured yoghurt and the tomato sauce on the pizza do count towards my five-a-day, I am prouder of my healthy dietary choices. I will top up the pizza with a beer; oats are nutrient-rich foods.

I look at the brown envelope. It is from B. A while back, we chatted about me finding a new purpose in my life and how it would be good to remember my thoughts as a girl. She casually mentioned she had kept ALL my letters from way back when. I open the envelope and my younger self is there, staring back at me, letters that span from 1990 to 1999³.

Happy Halloween from the Ghosts of Years Past!

So many questions arise: Who does that? Who keeps letters that are 30 years old? A wonderful human being, that’s who. Who wrote those letters? What did she say in them? I think I am somewhat curious and kind of scared. On a scale from 0 to 10 how much will I find I let that girl down?

I will tackle those only when my family is back.

Friday

I wake up with a tingling feeling of anticipation. They are coming tomorrow!

I study some before I walk to A’s work, and we drive together to her house. I did not know they were building a cathedral from scratch and painting the walls themselves. Happily enough, they are not going for the “Michael Angelo was here” style. Just plain white, actually, no, it is more of a washed-off white (dirty white, we call it in Spain) to avoid the “I am in a psychiatric ward” vibe, which I think adds depth and is a very smart move. I confess to A I have never painted walls before. A is wise to give me a small brush to do small things; things that are easier to fix. We spend 4 hours painting, listening to 90s disco music and talking (and drinking a bit too). In the end, I come back home with a sense of gratitude and accomplishment… I didn’t know my friends had a “Sagrada Familia” going on… and now my claim to fame will be having contributed to its frescoes.

Saturday

I wake up and go for a run. 11K. This time, I cover my ears. I do some grocery shopping and put the last washing machine. I have managed to go through all of the laundry. I am not sure when it was that I had last seen the bottom of all the baskets… this and the Sistine Chapel episode are my biggest achievements of the week.

I check my stats:

I have run a total of 30 Km. I always liked nice round numbers.

I have spent 4 hours (give or take) in staring contests with Morris. The beast always wins.

I have cleaned his sandbox 21 times. I have also remarked how he always waits about three seconds after I have cleaned it to pop back in and deliver.

I have eaten about 5 Kg of carbs and drank 3L of coffee. I am ballparking this and possibly underreporting. No comment.

I am now counting the hours to hop on the train to meet them at the airport. This kind of sweet wait reminds me of the last scene of “The Time Traveller’s Wife”, where she is patiently waiting for she knows he is coming.

As Adrian Mole (aged 13 and 3/4) marvellously put it, “Love is the only thing that keeps me sane…”

1. Arguably the only looks of pity I have gotten are when I stare in the mirror. This is a poor look.

2. I do this twice a day, every day… not even like that I felt closer to them. There is something about human love that needs physical presence. I often wonder at these people with online friends. If that is you out there, you need to go out more, meet real people, get a hug, or two… make that three, for good measure.

3. From 10 to 20 years old. Arguably THE DECADE.

Normally here I would stick a “subscribe” button, but the thing is that the people from where I come from, Valencia, have been through a catastrophe caused by heavy rains and flash floods. So instead I will leave here two links- one for you to read about what happened and the other for you to make a voluntary donation to help out people who have lost everything, even loved ones, in the tragedy.