Purgatory of Persistence - 12-23-08

My mother reminded me today through her musings on the Secret that the key to making it work for you is “joyful expectation.” And it hit me again – but in a slightly new way – how completely that is missing from my life and just how long it has been gone. I used to have it. But it’s been so many weeks – really, since that date with Alan which gave me yet another epiphany but nevertheless wasn’t the date I had been expecting and signified still further continuation along this path. I think the real petrie dish for this lack of joyful expectation is my job. I have settled finally into a view of it that is not unbearable at every turn, but it is settling regardless, however necessary it is. I have found a few things that don’t blind me with their glare to focus my gaze on, and the best I can do is to continue calmly on, no longer flailing in the mounting waves, but also feeling no love or joy. In the Secret, you are supposed to manufacture those good feelings until you splash into the real thing, but I have not even come close to finding out how to achieve that, at least over a long period of time. So there is no joy to be found in my job, that enormous chunk of my days, and the most I can feel is a dutiful gratitude for what I do have as a result of this job.

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But I think it is only compounding the obstacles to joy that I am still alone. I admit freely I have not been going out and pursuing all possible paths to the One, scrabbling for any sign I’m on the right track without rest. I stopped actually doing anything after that date with Alan and hoped and hoped and hoped still more that somehow the Secret would entail a respite, some sort of ending in this endless-seeming solitude. I hoped and chose to believe that if I really didn’t want another dating service experience, if I didn’t want it strongly enough, then it wouldn’t continue to be my experience. I thought God and the Secret had to be creative enough to generate an organic meeting with my mate, one not so fraught with preconceived notions and expectations and choices and thought. But however much I hoped that could be for me, days passed, one after the other like dominoes caught in molasses. And I remained alone. And no opportunity presented itself. And my vision dimmed until I felt just like the old Nicole, unable to see myself responding to a man even in a natural setting. And joyful expectation eroded into utter stillness.

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A job that at best is merely bearable and a constant stream of reinforcement to my current reality as a single woman have conspired to make me feel nothing. I am blind and deaf and mute. I am once again numb. My life is a sensory deprivation tank. And I just can’t seem to find a way to change that, to access the key to change.

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It’s just been so long since I had something to look forward to. Christmas is already here, that most beloved and joyful of holidays for me, and I feel nothing. I see the tree and decoration and presents and it feels like any other Thursday. Occasionally I feel the most muffled stir of the old emotion I would feel every year prior, that awareness that yet again it’s just the three of us and would I ever find anyone.

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It seems pretty clear my only option is It’s Just Lunch. Just like my job, “I have no other options.” It is my life right now. Mom said a teacher of the Secret said it seems there is a force that prevents you from getting what you want until you’ve fulfilled a certain quota of persistence. That you have to suffer and wait for a certain, undisclosed amount before it comes, but it will come. And so my only options at this juncture and for who knows how long is Newsome Park and It’s Just Lunch, the two most loathed things in my life. Lovely. How did I use the Secret so well for so long only to be left with those two options? I may have faltered recently but I invested many good months. And all I have to comfort me is the job of believing that it will come to me. I just have to find a way not to count my days as they burn away, one by one. I have to just not think how all these days being wasted could be spent in love and happy. I am nearly 30 and still with nothing to show for it.

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So that is why I accepted that I had to stay in this job and that I have to do It’s Just Lunch or some other dating service. That less lovely side of maturity, of this real life of mine. I don’t know how. I don’t know how I will do another date and all that entails, the getting ready, the drive to one of the many restaurants that have tragically been linked irrevocably in my mind with blind dates, the first sight of each other, the forced conversation, the relieved moment when we can part ways and I can go home. I really don’t know how I can do that – not just two more times with I.J.L. but with the next dating service and the next and the one after that. All the while with nothing really good in my life aside from my condo that it seems I can’t afford and my parents. Nothing to get really excited about to remind me of what joyful expectation is so I can manufacture it to bring my future to me. The most I’ve been able to muster for a long time is a dull, forced reminder that it’s coming. But is it coming if I can’t feel that joyful expectation? What if I’m just caught in a downward spiral and I stay alone and trapped behind my classroom door? A purgatory of persistence? Screw that.