Two and ten and one...

Two things about the weather.

First, I read this article about a polar vortex descending upon the midwest in the very near future.  Now, I've watched and read forecasts about this winter and all noted that we were not going to be having the polar vortexes that wreaked havoc last winter.  Nope.  Not at all.  Except.  Except that we are.  SIGH.

Second, one forecast (I check many these days), has Monday as being 55 degrees.  From there we will be descending into the depths of winter, but 55 degrees is paintable weather.  As in ... I could prime and get one coat on the railing of the lower porch.  Not the stair railing, if it goes in this weekend, but the main railing.  Am I nuts?

Speaking of articles, I read this one, which is actually from here.  And, frankly, it is so spot on that I want it recorded here ... for me:

10 Heartbreaking Truths Single People Never Talk About

By Shireen Dadkhah

Trust me, you don't understand what it means to be lonely.

For as long as I can remember, I've watched my friends pair off. Temporarily and fleetingly in high school, longer and more lasting in college, and now, permanently. Throughout it all, I've remained single. Too shy, too insecure, too...whatever. I got used to my role as the Single One—I was even okay with it. As an introvert, I not only like my alone time, I need it. But, somewhere along the line, I stopped just being single and started being lonely. Most days I'm both. And try as my paired up friends might, they don’t seem to fully understand what it's like to watch everyone around you fall in love. They don't understand what it means to be lonely. So let me tell you.

1. You are nobody's first priority. Between boyfriends and girlfriends and spouses and kids and church, there's always someone before you on the priority list. I don't have that one person I come home to at the end of the day, with whom I share all the mundane details of my life. So I parse them out between friends and family, sometimes oversharing because I just need someone to validate my existence. I'm not saying it's wrong that I'm not the top priority (of course family should come first). But for the perpetually alone sometimes it'd be nice to be first. Just once. Just for a day.

 

2. Physical touch is a thing for other people. When you're not part of a couple and you're living alone, physical touch goes out the window. And not just sexy, intimate touches. I'm talking mundane, everyday, almost-no thought-put-into-them touches. Last week, I realized it had been months since I’d been touched by another person. For as much as I value and need alone time, nothing is more isolating than realizing no one has touched you in over a month. Nothing.

3. Jealousy is green and ugly and real. I don't want to be a jealous person. I don't like being a jealous person. But when the loneliness is overwhelming and all-consuming, I can't help it. I can't help but be jealous of the fact that other people have someone to come home to—that they have the occasional unthinking brush of hands and take so much for granted.

4. There's physical pain associated with being lonely. It's not something you know until you've experienced it, and it's hard to describe. But it actually hurts to be lonely. It's an ache in your chest, a heaviness that you can't shake, a longing that only the touch of another person can soothe.

5. Being the third wheel sucks. No matter how much I like my friends' significant other (and really, they're great!), I don’t want to be the third or fifth wheel. A little part of me dies every time I have to plaster a smile on my face and joke to the waiter that the bill is going to be split, "Two, two, and me. Just me."

6. Friendship isn't enough. This one is hard. I have an outstandingly good group of friends and family, but as much as I want them to be (and as much they wish they could be), they aren't enough. I've tried really hard to make them enough, but it's like forcing a puzzle piece into a spot it doesn't belong. You can push and push and push, but it's never going to quite sit right.

7. Everyone is part of a couple. Or maybe it just seems that way when you're not. But from my point of view, everywhere I look, I see couples. Even events are geared towards couples. Have you ever tried cooking for one? It's not pretty.

8. The grass isn't greener. Stop telling me how you'd love to have some peace and quiet or a night where no one touches you. Because that's not what I'm talking about. There is a profound, bone-deep difference between "alone time" and being lonely. Comparing the two or romanticizing something I consider painful undermines my feelings and makes me hate you a tiny bit.

9. This isn't a "lifestyle" choice. Plenty of folks choose to be single. Nobody chooses to be lonely. That's part of the problem. I didn't ask for this. I don't want this. But it's not something I can fix on my own.

10. No one gets it. It’s kind of like the Dead Dad's Club. (Please lower your pitchforks and allow me to explain.) Until you lose your dad, you don’t know what it's like. You can sympathize and you can think, "Oh, that's really sh*tty," but you can't really empathize. And it's true for loneliness, too. Unless you've experienced it—unless you know what true, deep, painful loneliness is like—you don't get it. And, well, that just makes things all the more lonely, doesn't it?

Seriously, this is really, really, really spot on.  I've shared with with a few single folk I know and each time I was thanked.  In a way, reading it, is like being heard.

Funny, just the other day my sister referenced the Dead Dad's Club.  By that I mean, she said she thought she understood how hard it is to lose your father, but now knows she understood nothing, knew nothing.  A friend of hers lost her father a while ago.  Now ... now my sister gets it.

I wouldn't add to this article, because I think it paints a honest, full picture.  But I will chime in on something I just don't want to hear about anymore.  The other day, someone stopped by and remarked for the 100th time about remarkable it is that I have done all this work around my house.

It isn't.
It isn't remarkable.
Not at all.

Yes, in looking at the end result, I do still want that effusive adulation.  [Case in point, I received hardly any adulation on the near miraculous change to the horridly ugly basement steps that were lined with different colored carpet squares that were long, long, long past their prime.]  But the effusive adulation is for the end result, the beauty, the care, the working toward keeping this home ... relevant ... for the next 95 years.  Not for me actually doing the work.

In truth, despite the help labor is for dealing with upsettedness is for me, I do not want to be the one laboring.  I don't have a choice about it.  I do not have a husband or a father or a brother or an uncle or a friend or a neighbor or some male(s) from church who will do the things that needed doing.  And I cannot afford to pay anyone to do the hard labor of, for example, scraping paint from my back porch or the front steps.

When the kitchen was done, I needed to paint the trim and doors in there.  I needed to do so because they had not been recently painted, but also because the construction folk were really, really, really hard on them.  I got two quotes to have the baseboards (two walls), door frames (three), and one side of each of the two doors painted.  The cheapest quote was $400!  I was flabbergasted, especially because the painting took just a couple of hours for me to do it.  A couple of hours and days of paint in my hands.

Over the past fours years, what I can do has dwindled markedly, which is upsetting to me.  The old me certainly would not have returned that third can of paint remover goop for the front steps, but the me I am now is just too exhausted for doing the proper job there.  The steps are no longer slippery.  That has to be enough for me.

I am so exhausted that, despite all the stuff still rattling around my head, I fall asleep the minute I close my eyes.  No more lying in bed for hours on end trying to fall asleep.  If the pain in my midsection is manageable, I'm out.  I'm out and struggle to get back out of bed (aside from fetching ice packs and feeding Amos his morning meal) before twelve or more hours have passed.

If Firewood Man were able to come, I would have let him be the one climbing the ladder and finishing the painting.  If I did not have to spend the extra money shoring up the back porch (I still shudder over the revelation that two of the three supports were gone), I would absolutely have paid Firewood Man to paint the airing porch railing.  He would charge me his usual pittance.  And, for once, I wouldn't argue with him.  I'm that tired.

My one-liner about how hard being single:  You are always the only one to take out the trash.  There's no one else to do it.  Just once.  Just this time.  [Amos is absolutely no help in this area.]

Anyway, I really, really, really don't want to hear that it so [fill in your adjective here] that I do all this work around the house.  I do it because there is no one else.  Yes, I have always liked learning about tending to houses and being able to make repairs.  But that does not make moot the fact that I learned those things and did all the work because there was no one else.

And now ... there still isn't.  I have homemade coupons for help that are meaningless.  I have had offers for help, but ones that remained vague and unavailable at the times I've asked specifically.  Someone once remarked to me that the idea or offer of help is what you receive more than actual help.  I have read much the same on that dysautonomia blog. 

I think, perhaps, the work that I have done—at times almost frenetically—is my attempt to prepare my home for the time when I can do little ... or nothing ... about the house.  Getting as many ducks in a row as possible.  Structural ducks. Maintenance ducks.  Accessibility ducks.  Organizational ducks.  Safety ducks.  
Whatever the reason, I do the work because it is needful.  And I do the work because there is no one else.