TheBanyanTree: Random

[Monique Colver]

My security lies in my isolation, an isolation that is not unpleasant and is
often necessary. Without the occasional isolation, I wouldn’t survive in the
world. It’d be too much for me, all at once, and I’d implode with the strain
of it.

My husband just came halfway downstairs to ask me where I’d been stationed
in Germany. That was half my lifetime ago, and yet it’s a question that
still pops up, now and then. He’s working today, which means he’s on the
phone with people trying to quit smoking across the US, and with his
co-workers. How this came up in the conversation, I have no idea. I
answered, “Hahn,” and he went back upstairs to relay this to whoever he was
talking to. Little pieces of my life, thrown out as trivia, like stray
confetti. Not much of it, just a sprinkle now and then.

I have been living a happy life, secure in my fragile connection to the
world, a world that makes me laugh and despair, often all at the same time.
I count myself among the luckiest. Occasionally I may worry – what if all
this were taken from me? It can happen, can’t it? But mostly I don’t. Mostly
I keep to myself the knowledge that what I have is here to stay.

I just read by a book by a Facebook friend, which is to say, someone I
haven’t physically met. It’s his debut novel, and it reminded me of how
fragile we all are, and how growing up can be the hardest thing we ever do.
It’s a fabulous book – I do recommend it, Pop Salvation by Lance Reynald.

It also reminded me what it’s like to not fit in, something which I still
carry with me, even as a middle-aged verging towards dumpy
bookkeeper/accountant, which is only what I do, not who I am. I’m not all
that different from the gawky teenager I once was, the one who didn’t belong
at home or at school. I’m much more content now, and I don’t care as much
about the things that I’m told should matter to me: acceptance, belonging.
Put me in a group of people where I don’t know everyone and I’ll stay in the
background, careful not to blow my cover, which is that: I don’t belong. I’m
on the fringe of every group, but one-on-one, I’m in the middle.

It makes no sense, unless you’ve been there too.

My life is a series of trivial events, strung together like popcorn on
string, and on special occasions, I take it out of storage and drape it
around myself. These occasions are few and far between, and some of the
popcorn is starting to fall off the string. How’s that for a metaphor? A bit
much, perhaps?

I still don’t fit in neatly, all these years later, and that’s okay. I’m
comfortable going out and doing what I want, mostly, and I’m comfortable
with where I’m at. It’s not where I am that matters as much as who I am, and
given that I can’t be anyone else, it’s good that I’m happy with that.

This past week my confetti has included drives up and down I-5, dinner and
drinks with a great friend, hot summer days and the freedom to relax and
enjoy the day, glimpses of boats on the river, the noise of fireworks as I
try to sleep, a task or two successfully completed, emails from friends I
haven’t seen in a few years, dinner with my husband night after night, my
dogs playing and curling up with me at night to sleep, a hospice visit and a
chat with my hospice chaplain, a committee meeting for another nonprofit,
quiet mornings, pain in my leg when I wake up day after day, dinner at
Palomino’s for my husband’s second birthday dinner, and bursts of color in
the night sky that remind me that I’m not, despite my best efforts, totally
isolated.


-- 
Monique Colver