One time, when I was about 8 or 9, my mother was really late picking me up from catechism class.  I don’t know if she forgot, or if she just lost track of the time.  But it was about two miles from our house to the church and I decided I would start walking.  I got about 1/3 of the way there when she rolled up in her 1981 Subaru hatchback.  Instead of an apology for being so late, I got in trouble for not waiting for her.  By the time we arrived in our driveway, I was doing the ugly cry and repeatedly saying I was sorry while snot dripped onto my church clothes.

When I was a child and I used to get lost, or if someone was supposed to pick me up and they didn’t, I would get this terrible stomachache.  No one could reassure me that I would be ok except for my parents or sometimes my grandmother when any of them finally arrived.  I was convinced, in my little girl head, that my parents might actually leave me one day and I would never be able to live with my family again.  I would be homeless and have to live with a stranger.  All because I was too much of a bother, a bad kid, someone they would all be better off without.

Come to think of it, they used to threaten me with that on occasion, my parents.  They used to tell me that if I didn’t hurry up or behave myself that they were going to leave me in whatever random place we were — the NJ Turnpike or the Neshaminy Mall or McDonald’s — and that some other family would then take me home with them.  One time, I got separated from my folks outside Sears at Christmastime and this very kind elderly couple stayed with me and tried to calm me down by buying me ice cream and saying that if my parents didn’t come back for me, I could come and live with them. This sent me hyperventilating. I was in full melt-down mode by the time my dad showed up.

Sometimes, I get that same little girl feeling.  Recently, I went out hiking with a Meetup group and a bunch of us got separated from the others and got lost for about 30 minutes.  It was really dark, I had no idea where I was, I didn’t know any of these people, and I hadn’t eaten dinner.  And my stomach went into knots.  To calm myself, even though it was borderline late where my (recently downgraded to sort-of) girlfriend was, I called her.  The conversation was about a minute and it was terse.  She was not happy to hear from me, even though the night before we talked for 45 minutes and it was like old times.  Instead of calming me, the phone call resulted in producing The Worst Stomachache of My Adult Life.  For a while, I was sure I might actually shit myself.

I broke out into a cold sweat, and yet I couldn’t stop.  There were rattlesnakes and scorpions and coyotes out there.  It was pitch black apart from our headlamps.  I needed to keep up with these people.

And I also wanted to cry.  Because I felt like I was losing a person’s love who I loved.  And it hurt me.  It was like she was saying, “I’m going to leave you here with strangers and you’re going to have to live with them now.”

I managed to make it the three miles back to the car without crapping my pants.  I wished everyone well and said I’d see them at the next hike.  I smiled.  I held it together.  And then I got in my truck and drove home, doing the ugly cry all the way.  By the time I arrived to my sofa, my chihuahua curled up against my hip, I was exhausted and an emotional wreck.  Instead of taking a shower and going to bed, I kicked off my dusty hiking shoes, put my feet up and clicked on the tv.  Few things in adult life are as comforting to me as my 60″ 4k ultra-hd flat screen.  Only the love of a good woman would have a more calming effect.  I fell asleep this way.  Somewhere in the night, I turned the television off.  I brushed my teeth.  I pulled a blanket up over me and went back to bed on the sofa.  In the morning, I wondered where I was.  My eyes were puffy.  It came back to me that I was alone again.  But also, whether anyone else loves me or not, I had to make coffee.

As much as I have felt a varying sense of alienation and other-ness all my life, as much as I have longed to belong and be understood in all my unique hurt and fabulousness, I have this weird core belief that I know what people’s motivations are… Not just motivations, but intentions.  On an average day, I busy myself with trying to discern other people’s thoughts and figure them out, decode them.  I then convince myself I know what they think about stuff… about me.  And a lot of the time, it’s what I probably have felt in the past in a similar situation.  Or it’s how I would probably feel if faced with… well, me, in all my hurt and fabulousness.

But I’m wrong.  Even if I’m partially right, I’m wrong.  Because I can’t possibly know all the nuances of another person’s feelings or thoughts or experiences about the world or anything or anyone in it.  I half the time (or maybe even most of the time) can’t even describe or decode my own thoughts and feelings about stuff.  It’s so complex.  Everything is so complex.

I love Diet Coke.  And I hate it.  I hate that I’m addicted to it.  And yet, I feel like I deserve it.  I’m worried it’s killing me.  I’m also worried that they’ll stop making it some day and then what will I do?  And that’s just soda.  And that’s not even all the things I feel about it.  It doesn’t even have calories, for fuck’s sake.

I am the worst kind of narcissist because I can’t stand myself half the time.  I think I’m lacking in so many fundamental ways.  But there’s still this voice in me, this thing that says there’s hope for me on the other side of whatever bullshit I’m going through at the moment… that someone may love me yet.  I’m hoping that someone is me.