An unexpected trigger arose today. I won a brass mirror in a raffle that I was able to take home to use in my house. The staff helped me load it into my car, but now I have to get it into the house.

I helped my friend, who won a shelf from that same raffle, load it into her car. She took it home and her husband helped unload it and put it into place.

All of a sudden, a wave of sadness washed over me.

I don't have that.

I don't have someone to help me carry in the groceries, someone to sit next too while I talk about my day, someone to offer me a hand with the dishes, or someone to help with the heavy things.

There's some sort of double meaning there that one could uncover. How I not only have to carry the truly heavy things alone, but also how I have to carry the emotionally heavy things alone.

So much of my life I have been independent - practically taught to be that way from a young age. It was expected that if something needed carried, washed, or felt, I had to handle it alone. Typically I would consider independence a good things, but this one wrecked me. It reminded me of how truly alone I am in this life.

Of course I have friends to talk to, people who can help me move if planned far enough in advance, and friends who I can have dinner with - but every one of those things is circumstantial and temporary.

I consistently try to be comfortable with who I am enough that I don't NEED anyone but honestly, sometimes that isn't enough.

I may appear fiercely independent and self sufficient, but inside, I am still that little girl who feels forced to do the hard things alone. The little girl who was taught that help and companionship is a luxury only some people find. You can't buy it, you can't manufacture it, you can negotiate it. There are just some things in this life that alone-people will never have.

It reminds me of this movie I saw where the main character is so used to being alone that she invents things to make her life easier as an alone-person. Specifically she makes a device that helps her zipper her dress without the help of another person. Its so sad to me that the world and the way it works is created for community, its created for people who have people. True self-sufficiency doesn't exist.

Now I'm forced to sit here with this mirror in the backseat, reminded by it's presence that I am alone, at the core, in this world.

So I'll walk out of here, go home, and sit alone on my couch, eat dinner alone, and cry alone, while the mirror stays, unmovable, alone in the car. Like me, forced to understand that without help, you can never truly be powerful enough to be completely independent.  





-t.s.