Being an introvert, I need a lot of time to my self. I spend most mornings happily surrounded by a pack of dogs and the quiet. I read, think, and write. Even with Walt present, I can be alone. He has similar rhythms. We can lose entire days to our books and projects without interrupting each other. I don’t need for him to disappear in order to be fed. A good thing because we tend to be attached at the hip.
All that being said, before I went off to Georgia for my writing retreat I became very anxious. Without the distractions, what would I discover about myself? I had never been alone for longer than two weeks. Ever. I’d moved from my parent’s house into a string of crowded venues: dorms, apartments with multiple roommates, then relative-infested Iran. Once I had children, I ceased being single, even after my divorce. Now, of course, there’s Walt, and the dogs, and the cats, and one last kid. The prospect of being by myself—no interruptions, no responsibilities, no demands, nothing to think about but my book— should have been exciting, based on my proclivities. Instead I was glum.
Six weeks in an isolated, internet-free, cell-phone-less cabin. Alone. Fine when I was writing. Not so fine when I came up for air.
For the first time in my life I had no idea what to do with myself. I went for my runs, but there were only so many miles to chew up the time. When I wasn’t watching the squirrels hoarding buckeye out my window, or brewing the thirtieth cup of tea, I picked at myself in the bathroom mirror. I discovered new lines in my cheeks, a possible patch of melanoma at the tip of my nose, and yellowing teeth. For kicks I started a flossing campaign and swabbed on gallons of body lotion. Frankly, I bored myself silly. Despite all the yoga and self-help books, I learned that I am a creature incapable of being.
On top of all that, I felt guilty in Georgia. Guilty because Walt was feeling terribly alone and jealous at home in Connecticut. Instead of working exclusively on his writing projects, the way I was, he was stuck in the trenches. I was in the position to concentrate on my work because he was folding the laundry, feeding the animals, and paying the bills.
I suspected I might feel remorseful even before I left. So, among the other books I took for my project, I brought along The Black Swan by Anne Batterson. I should make it clear here that Anne is a friend and that the reason I wanted to reread her story of migration and adventure was because she deals so lyrically with the issues of guilt and solitude. “Time alone,” she says, “has a different texture, a greater density.”
I wanted to luxuriate in my own presence the way Anne does. Not just for a morning, but also for a six-week stretch. I wanted to feel like her because I admire her fierce independence, her fearlessness, her eternal youthfulness, her sense of what it is to be a good wife and mother, her writing, and her spirituality. Not just on the page, but in real life, too. When I grow up, I want to be just like her.
Some time back when Anne was in her mid-50’s, she decided to take off into the wild to be alone. She’d been restless and depressed for quite a while. The spontaneous cross-country trip wasn’t a matter of choice; it was one of need. Leaving behind a husband whom she absolutely adores, she drove off in a VW camper to follow migratory birds because she believed they had something important to teach her.
While I have yearned for space from time to time, Anne is someone who needs long, regular stretches of solitude in order to survive. She describes her childhood:
Once free of the house, I would take off in the blue half-light like a little sparrow, flitting from yard to yard to yard. In the privacy of the dawn hour, the world of our West Hartford neighborhood and Elizabeth Park beyond was hushed and sacred, filled with wonders that were mine alone. I remembered a wheelbarrow heaped with new snow that cupped my six-year old body like a hand. I lay in it for a long time waiting for the light, watching quarter-sized snowflakes weave a thick blanket over me thinking happily that this must be how dead people feel, cozy there in the snow and the dark…but what I do know is that it was during my dawn roamings that I felt the most whole. Like I was part of an intentioned, orderly universe…solitude, for me, was an elemental need, like water or love.
I suppose I could chalk up my inability to enjoy solitude to a very different kind of childhood. One that relied on the input of others. Exploration wasn’t encouraged; we were taught to play it safe. So timorous, so afraid to have an opinion, we barely had a self. Evidence: sitting in the living room watching Saturday morning cartoons with our father. Bugs Bunny would come on and no matter how funny the pratfall—Elmer Fudd shooting himself in the face, Daffy Duck losing his tail feathers, Wilie E. Coyote running out of road— my brother would study our reactions before allowing himself to laugh.
It was as though he couldn’t trust his own judgment. As if laughing when no one else did would have exposed him as a fool.
Like my brother, I make sense of myself, of what I should be feeling, how I should be reacting, by studying other people. On my own, I have a hard time grasping who it is that I am. The reflection in the mirror tends to stare back: clueless.
When I read The Black Swan, I understand myself so much more. That, I suppose is why I read (and write) memoir. It is the juxtaposition of myself against another person, a person capable of driving to the heart of sensations and feelings she might otherwise take for granted, that allows me to fill in the blanks.
I recognize, for instance, that I am the kind of person who can step out of the car, look at the Grand Canyon, note how pretty it is, then, two minutes later, feel perfectly content to turn my back and head on down the road. I know this because Anne is so adept at describing that which I do not tend to possess: a connection to nature, an ability to lose myself, to be by myself, to know reverence and unfettered joy.
The birds are just starting to unwrap when I pull up beside the flats: a wing, an oscillating head, the tucked-up leg poking out, then stretching way, way back. I leap out into the glistening morning, uncoil my own body, put my palms together, and bow to the sun….Giddy with the sense of something ultimate, I stack things up on top of the bus, fill my thermos with coffee, and then climb carefully up the front door into the broad, flat roof….When I finally climb back down the front door of the bus, my legs are stiff. I must have been sitting motionless for a long time…Where have I been for the past eight hours?
Just as good at describing how we are different, Anne reminds me of how much we are alike. This is the necessary component of a really fine memoir. It’s not just a personal history; it’s a broader truth. Those mixed feelings of love and guilt and fear, the same ones I own, aren’t the sign of a personality disorder, they are perfectly normal. My own romantic anxieties make far more sense.
My emotions began to snarl. There is nothing I can do to spare David from the next few weeks…that’s the price tag, I remind myself. ….I love being around David. Even though we have been married for nine years, it seems like months. We are still a bit in awe of each other. Afraid of screwing up. This is no small matter. My first marriage was so cataclysmic; I shut down my heart for fourteen years. Except the part where my children grew and thrived.
I read somewhere once that children of alcoholics, like Anne and I, tend to model the behaviors of the parents and other adults, even after they grow up. Surrounded by chaos and crisis, they look around—at other families, at other people, at television shows—for a reality check. They think: what I’ve got going on can’t be right, but what is normal?
And while I started doing this when I read The Black Swan—comparing myself to Anne, labeling myself a codependent wimp, lamenting the fact that I am too screwed up to enjoy some peace – I didn’t end this way. There is something so unique about Anne, so impossible to copy, that I realized no one could be her, just as no one could be me. We spring from different households. We experience certain childhoods. We choose one path over another. We make our own mistakes.
What I learned from Anne is this: Have the audacity and courage to be yourself. Embrace it all. Live your life as art.
