Sit With It

I was worried I'd be bored without a boyfriend and I'll admit, the first few weeks were rough. I'd dash off to the gym right after work, burn a bunch of calories, get a big endorphin rush, hurry home to let my dog Bill out to rule his backyard, race upstairs to take a shower, and then pause to look at the clock. Six thirty? You've got to be kidding me...

What would I do until bedtime? I mean, you can only make a bowl of cereal last so long, and I don't have cable. What does an unwife unmother do on a school night? Besides have heart-thumping anxiety attacks while staring at her black-screened cell phone and its pitiful absence of text messages or voicemails?

This evolved quite rapidly into oh-no-what-have-I-done loneliness. Itchy with panic, I stared at that sluggish clock. Then I pulled out my bible, Liz Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love, and revisited a very good point: "When I get lonely these days, I think: So BE lonely, Liz. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience."

Ah, yes. Sit with it.

So, I sat with it. For about 5 minutes.

Then I got online and searched for things to do. I went to more movies in two weeks than I had all year.  I checked out stacks of books and DVDs from the library. It took me three weeks to watch one season of mafioso in suburban NJ, one season of dysfunctional psychology in Brooklyn, two seasons of lesbian Los Angelenas, and all of "Seinfeld Season 5." (I couldn't finish any of the books except poet Richard Blanco's City of a Hundred Fires.)

Columbia's Museum of Art at night.

Finally, I did something worth talking about. I attended the gala members only opening of "Monet to Matisse" at the museum. I arrived early and made a mad dash for the food tables - if it had been a race, I'd have won the gold! For my first decent dinner on my own in a month, I unabashedly filled up two dainty plates with camembert and hot crab dip, baguette slices and baby asparagus, water crackers and petit fours. I met up with my friend Sherry and before long we were visiting with an elegant woman who'd gone to Europe "on a shoestring" back in 1966 (the year of my birth). Between her tales of misadventure in Amsterdam and my story about losing a flip-flop on a crowded bus in El Salvador, much merriment ensued.

I'd like to try "sitting with it" some time, I really would. For now though, I think I'm going to run with it.