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Limbo

September 26, 2010

Two years since moving here, I find myself in limbo again. I spent 2 years building up this little life here. Great experiences, good times, best friends, fun adventures. And then suddenly, everything in my life is in flux again - work, friends, location…

My best friend moved back to Spain at the end of summer. I’ve not had to post much here because I’ve been busy with friends and posting short thoughts on Facebook. I have been feeling more connected to people that I have felt in a long time. But it feels like now that the key person is gone, everyone else is also gone - even the ones who didn’t even know her. Here’s the skinny. One of our mutual friends - never easy to pin down, it seems she lives by the Heidelberg’s uncertainty principle. With my best friend gone, it seems even harder to pin her down. She messaged me about going to brunch today, I arranged my weekend to work for this, looked forward to spending time with a friend, but then no word from her for a bit, and today at 1pm she tells me she has other plans. One of my own friends who shied away from hanging with us because of excessive money spending - now that my best friend is gone, she still continues to find some excuse to not meet up. Another of my own friends… well more and more I don’t find I understand him, nor does he try particularly hard to meet with me. A friend of mine who was going to come back to stay at my place, date and plans made… decided finally to not come after “much thought”, but can’t even keep her reason straight when making up excuses to me why she won’t be able to make it.

While my best friend was here, we always made plans with different people to do things on weekends. And sometimes weekdays. And now that she’s not here… well there’s nobody directly watching my back. Nobody to chat to about everything on the fly. Meanwhile she’s gone back to a new busy job, in a different environment… while I’m here in the same place, but just a big hole in my world… Why aren’t any of these so-called friends stepping up to the plate to help me back up again?

Meanwhile with work, I’ve been having a lot of difficulty focusing on getting this very important manuscript done. I feel like this summer has been a total loss in regards to work. I fee like I’ve wasted a lot of work hours doing very little. And that makes me feel very unproductive, and as a result this entire experience feels very unrewarding. I gave myself a break. August, my mother was visiting, and I took time off to go sightseeing and relaxing. But for some reason I’m still tired, drained. Can’t focus.

This stint here was always planned to last only a total of 3 years. Now we’ve been through 2. Everyone’s been asking me - what are you doing next year? What are your plans? Where do you want to go? The truth is, this is going very slowly. I’ve been trying to create options, but this has gone so slowly and without progress, that it’s frustrating. It’s true that my salary funding here is secure for another 15 months, so I shouldn’t be stressed yet, but I am.

My romantic life has moved nowhere fast. Can’t say I haven’t tried, but I keep finding myself in the same situation of men who like me such that they want to keep talking to me and flirting with me, but not enough to want any intimacy. And I don’t mean sex. I mean emotional intimacy. And suddenly I’m in a spot of not knowing where I’ll be in 12-15 months, and suddenly I’m thinking maybe I shouldn’t be trying to meet someone here. I don’t know. All I know is that it seems that the men I am attracted to do not find me attractive, and they spend way too much time thinking too hard. It seems that the older people get while being single, the more neurotic they get, and the more psychopathologies they pick up along the way. And the more attractive men I meet that want to be good friends with me, the less attractive I feel. And these days it seems that everyone is getting married or having children. Two of my 3 neighbours got married this past month, and from September to December, I’m attending 3 weddings. None of this helps to make me feel particularly better. Everyone is complaining about having to take time out for their family - I wish I had a family that needed my time.

On top of all of those things, and definitely exacerbating things, is that I’ve been diagnosed with hypothyroidism. It does explain some of the fatigue and difficulty I’ve had focusing on getting things done. It also explains why I’ve had so much trouble losing weight. The fix seems simple enough - daily thyroid hormone replacement. It’s a common problem with a simple solution. The thyroid hormone is important in regulating metabolism, and low levels results in fatigue, headaches, weight gain, impaired wound healing, dry skin, thin hair, and a myriad of other problems. And I realize it takes time for hormone replacement to help with all the associated problems. But meanwhile, this isn’t helping my ability to move forward out of this limbo.

Here I am, two years later, devoid of meaningful relationships, dissatisfied with my work, and uncertain about my career. So that’s what’s been happening. A lot. And then suddenly, nothing at all.

P.S. I’ve finally updated all the links and dates on this site.

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