a little naked honesty

I -- once -- was better
I put off all my grief
I put off all my grief

~Sufjan Stevens


I woke up in a rage today. It's beginning to happen more frequently, where the absence of a body next to me in the bed makes my eyes hot and my stomach clench. I seethe in the shower. I hit the accelerator a little too hard on the way to work. I slam papers and staplers down on the desks. I yell at the computer for booting up too slowly. I kick the copier just because I hate it.

But then my boss talked to me this morning about "fishing," and asked me some questions about what kind of man I'm looking to find, and gave me some tips on where to go to find him. He concluded the conversation with, "We need to get you someone. We can't have you sad all the time."

And I thought, Sad? Angry, almost always; sarcastic, definitely; ferocious, yes -- at least about this topic. But I'm happy about plenty of other things. My cat, my cooking, my friends, my family, God.

He's a shrewd one, my boss. He doesn't miss much. Under every emotion I emit, there's a grief. Every day I mourn my aloneness. I can't shake it.

I'm not sure why the human psyche almost instantaneously converts sorrow to anger -- perhaps because anger tends to give a person strength, and I need to hold it together through each day, not fall apart; or perhaps because anger is easier to handle. I'd much rather be furious than sad. There's something -- well, anger burns, and that can be distracting and thrilling. Nothing compares to a brilliantly constructed, irate sentence that pointedly gets across something true in the meanest way possible. Anger causes pain. Anger is satisfying.

Grief is not. Grief saps the strength, dulls the ambition, kills the wit, swallows joy. And I think I feel guilty about grief because it doesn't get anything accomplished; it's not productive. I can do a lot in one day when I'm in a rage; I can barely get out of bed when I'm swamped in sorrow. Which is fine if you're mourning the death of a pet, or the loss of a job, or the protracted illness of a loved one, because you're supposed to grieve in those situations, and the grief eventually fades as you cope, heal, and keep moving forward.

But this? This aloneness? This lack of companionship, lack of physical intimacy, lack of love and touch and purpose and children? This shallow dependency on a job for life fulfillment, instead of a family? I carry it with me every day, everywhere. It doesn't end. There's no set expiration date on my single status. It could end tomorrow, or it could never end at all. It's not a grief that comes from loss; it's a grief that comes from absence, from never having had, and so it's not something you necessarily go through the Five Stages of Mourning or whatever to get past. I go through them all the time, and in no particular order. Some days I deny that I care, or I'm angry, or I try making deals with God, or I cry, or I'm content. But I don't get over it. The cycle spins out all over again, from day to day or even minute to minute. It has no locus in time, so time doesn't heal it.

I tend to ignore the fact that all anger stems from hurt or sorrow. Probably most other people do, too, and so we seem to be a rampaging army of Angry Young Women, and we look scary and estrogen-charged and unreasonable, when if you were to view us when we're alone, you'll probably find us sad, because the one thing we want most is continually denied us, and we don't know why, and we can't see a way out, and it hurts us.

I wake myself up crying sometimes. I was built to belong to a family, to have my own, to be someone's companion and helpmeet and lover. I was built to raise delightful, beautiful, confident children. But time continues to pass, and I'm alone.

So there it is. My rage and accusations pinpoint pieces of truth, but they also mask a sorrow so consuming I'm never free of it, even in my moments of blazing joy in Christ. And it's especially horrible because I don't understand why this yearning, which unfulfillment is the wellspring of the grief, hasn't been fulfilled.

I know it's better to be alone than to marry the wrong person, but why haven't I found the right person? Why hasn't he found me? Why does no one ask me out? Is there something wrong with me?

I'm not incomplete in myself. But I'm incomplete in my life. And I don't understand.