Hermitage

I've pretty much always known that I was a total fucking weirdo. As far back as I can remember, I've been a peculiar, melancholy and introspective soul, with little care for the lighthearted diversions regularly enjoyed by most members of the human race. Perhaps part of it has to do with my being, for all intents and purposes,an only child. (My two half-brothers, aged fourteen and thirteen at the time of my birth, did not live with us, and while they did share in some of the responsibility of babysitting and entertaining me, from time to time, I certainly could not count them as close playmates).

 My parents report various scenarios, from infancy onward, which raised a few eyebrows in the household. The new baby, it seemed, was fussy and cried often, seemingly for no reason. When placed into her Jolly Jumper - the swing that was all the rage for babies in the 1980s - the child appeared neither interested in jumping nor in any way jolly at the prospect of doing so. Noting the look of concern on Mother's face, the baby seemed to make a few halfhearted attempts to generate some sort of motion from the springy swing, before heaving a sigh of despair and hanging motionlessly from the harness, head lolled listlessly to one side. Mother remarked that perhaps the child might be touched in the head.

 While other new parents boasted that their toddlers were eagerly pulling themselves up to standing positions on furniture and teetering around living rooms on excited little legs as soon as they could, Ken and Virginia's baby was content to crawl, staring solemnly at her fellow, active infants with chagrin. Happy as little birds, the bubbly infants teetered with dizzy joy through kitchens and down hallways, chirping their nonsensical baby sounds. Ken and Virginia's child, with eyes so dark that they often appeared to be jet black, crawled with appropriate solemnity after them, pointing with grave concern at the electrical sockets in the walls, and saying, "Don't touch. Don't touch." Indeed, for her complete and total apathy toward physical pursuits, the baby more than outshone her infant peers in speech and cognitive development, articulating sentences from the time she was six months old and reading Dr. Seuss before she attended Kindergarten. 

Always feeling different, and knowing intrinsically that I was, has been both a blessing and a curse. I spent a lot of my late childhood and early teen years trying desperately to be the same as other people, to ingratiate myself with people who seemed to light up the world with their bright, fierce smiles and fearless senses of self. The trouble was, the things that I thought ought to impress others were mostly considered puzzling and "creepy".  Apparently, reciting "The Raven" in its entirety, by heart, to one's grade 8 cooking class partner, was less a way to make friends and more a way to elicit blank or concerned stares.

At this point in my life, four months into my thirty-fifth year, I am more keenly aware than ever that I am not like the other kids. With this awareness comes a crushing sense of loneliness that follows me throughout my days. I feel literally haunted by old memories, by times when I almost sort of kind of achieved a sense of normalcy. I move mechanically through work days at the funeral home, attempting to lose myself in the minutae of paperwork, or in the epic moments of grief that I witness every day. When 5 o'clock comes, I can hardly wait to return home and sleep. Sometimes, I'll sleep from 6 p.m. until the following morning, and still find that I have to drag myself out of bed to make it to work on time. The weekends, of course, are the worst. There are many in which I only leave the house to buy wine. I drink alone, and the warmth of this elixir envelops me, tells me that I'm okay, that I won't die alone, because at least it's there.

Now, don't get me wrong - I've been lucky enough, as I've traveled through the years, to find a few like-minded and kindred spirits. I have collected, like perfect, prized seashells, a handful of precious friends, to whom I am ever indebted for their humor, patience and good grace. I have even had the good fortune to have been in love, and to be loved in return. But still, the loneliness that hung over my cradle from birth continues to drape itself over me like a heavy, muslin curtain.

 Maybe it is the way in which I live now - alone, chronically-single, in an old apartment, preferring my own company as opposed to the effort it takes to get dressed up, to go out, to "network". Maybe it also has something to do with my total apathy for this quaint, yet sleepy little town. Or maybe it's just that many of my friends are all grown up now and have moved onto the next phase in their lives - marriage, children, real estate, RSPs. Just like taking those delirious first steps as a toddler, they have hurried toward these new, shining milestones, while I, as the grown up version of Baby Stephanie, have simply crawled cautiously along beside them, seeing only the dangers along the way.

I try as best I can to not feel sad about the way things turned out for me. After all, we are all the sum of our experiences, and we create our own realities through our decisions. I suspect that I have never wanted to achieve the things that other people do, but for some reason, I have a difficult time accepting that. I am saddened by the fact that I DON'T want those things, because by not pursuing them, I have carved myself out a strange little hollow of solitude that I must learn to accept.

 I'm not quite sure how it is that I missed the boat on a normal life.. but when I think back on it, I don't think I was anywhere even close to being near the dock to begin with.