Rejecting Your Own
Does everyone go through this, where you eschew contact with your social group, whether it be a just the usual collection of friends, or a larger community like neighbors or coworkers, or even your immediate family?The knee-jerk answer for why this happens is "fatigue" or even "boredom" or "frustration."
Lately for me, it's a combination of all these things, but it's also tinged with some unexpected longing to be different, to see what life might have been like had I taken a left instead of a right, an up instead of a down. Of wanting to surpass my caste, my collective, my assigned class or strata, just temporarily, and take a moment to parade (pretend) in a lifestyle that is not my own, a circle of people and activities that has nothing to do with me, but not so much out of boredom but out of curiosity.
What must it be like to be a parent? To have a nagging or dominant spouse? To have a church habit? To have multiple cars and kids going off to college and nosy in-laws that can show up in the driveway at any moment? To shop at the mega mart because I can't afford to feed my family organic all the time? To feel trapped by more than just my own life, but to be enveloped, wrapped up by, swallowed, by the roles I fulfill in others' lives -- parent, sanctioned spouse, caretaker? I by no means crave that alternate life, but it makes me insatiably curious at times. What would I have been like as a mother? Would I still abhor sharing my intimate space with overtly male energy?
I assign this rather perverse curiosity to the reality that my life is pretty different from the vast majority of people in the U.S. I share some of the same struggles to save money, pay bills, and make the right career decisions, but I'm not bearing the burdens of raising children and juggling intrusive relatives. My family is 2,500 miles away. There are no kids of any age making messes or keeping me up late at night. Since more folks choose That Way, when I chose This Way, the occasional bubble of "Should I have done That instead of This?" rises, and in the first moments of the bubble rising, I think maybe I was wrong to do This. But then the bubble bursts, and I realize this is the life I was intended for. I am happy with my choices, I am proud of the person I am and will continue to become.
But it does not erase the curiosity I feel or ease the drift or push away I feel right now for what and who I know. I guess for now I'm going to run with the Others and glimpse What Might Have Been. Then I'll come back glad it did not happen.