Categories of Hope

I had a very emotional day yesterday. Though two-thirds of it were spent with other people, I ended the night the same as I have for nearly every night the past four months - alone. With the preceding week being just as social, I found myself needing a release to make up for all the time I didn't spend alone.

And so I cried and cried. And spoke and wrote and writhed and cried. I mourned, yet again, my last relationship, which I chose to leave, because the current circumstances made that decision now seem nonsensical. I threw a pity party for myself because of my aloneness, even though the apartment I live in, miles away from friends and family, was chosen by me. I reflected on how even my aloneness caused another level of grief, the shame that other people knew how alone I was. And I marveled at the most privileged of existential crises - what do I do with all this free time, space, and stuff at my disposal?

I've long loved the idea of living a creative life, and I always envisioned that once I had my own place I could just set the ground on fire and be prolific in all my various pursuits. But instead I have had four months of not knowing how to handle the amount of wiggle room between me and others. Physical proximity aside, how do I create something with any semblance of meaning if there is no one to appreciate it? What is the point of cooking creatively if no one comes for dinner?

On my lunch-break walk today, I pondered creativity, and probed my brain for answers as to why I could not simply allow myself to take advantage of the solitude and create, unfettered. The feminist in me cropped up and exclaimed that I am perhaps too hung up on traditionally female concerns which may or may not actually represent my personal views of my solitude. My sister would struggle to have no one to care for or to care for her. My mother would wither if she didn't have an adult child around through whom she could live vicariously. But I... miss neither the comfort of a man's touch nor the conversations I have with friends. I miss groups, but maybe everyone does.

I believe that women sometimes have our thinking taken over by what we feel we ought to be doing or be concerned about, and we have to play mental tricks occasionally to regain control of our decision-making. I feel this struggle many times a day, when I switch back and forth from tending to my health or appearance to working on the task at hand. It takes a kind of willpower to maintain control of the mind's narrative for a prolonged amount of time.

So when I feel that I want to be creative, and sit down on the carpet and mess around with paper and colors for a while, so that I can make something and feel more alive, another voice reminds me that I hadn't done my due diligence for shaping up my body for the day, and so I am diverted.

If woman's struggle throughout history has been her appearance, her partner, and then her children, in that order, then I feel I must instead follow the struggle of man. I should think he struggles with ego, and with purpose, and with meaning. Monetizing his skill, becoming productive and perhaps well-regarded. 

This is a point of feminism that must be hammered in again and again. A woman is encouraged daily to restrict her realm of thought to the basics, and then she must pursue on her own anything besides that. And poor me, being single means I am troubled by keeping up appearances (though not yet by the nagging needs of a man) and so I am somewhat preoccupied.

I flirt with the idea of leaving all these concerns behind, but if that means I have to deny to myself that I am a sexual creature, I cannot do it. But it's time to start abandoning, little by little, the idea that feminine ideals for a well-lived life are not going to cut it for me, and that I can hope for milestones, feats, challenges, and paths of growth that have predominantly been reserved for men.