I sometimes wonder if anyone (everyone?) lives in their head as much as I do. I always accepted that it was normal taken to an extreme by my various neuroses, but maybe I’m not that far off. Maybe?

I’ve always had an active imagination, am always thinking over things that happened and how they could have happened if I’d just said or done something slightly more brilliant. In addition, I’m looking ahead to things (confrontations, inevitabilities) and trying to prepare myself for every conceivable variation of the outcome of even a simple ‘hello’. This is where I think I get a little weird. I hate to be surprised. No, wait, that’s not quite it. I love to be really truly surprised in a good way, it just hardly ever happens. I never really learned how to handle surprises, so they scare me a little. That’s more correct. And as such, I’m always trying to figure out where someone or something is going before they get there, before I get there, and I try to run through my reactions four or five ways until I come up with something I’m happy with. It’s like when I was in highschool and would totally re-write my homework if I didn’t like the way my handwriting looked. And I changed my handwriting periodically. And somehow, whenever someone compliments my handwriting I cannot help but share that little anectdote.

But I digress.

So my mind’s always running these what-if scenarios involving me, my family, my coworkers, friends, strangers, and a whole cast of second-string make-believe people or people I’ve barely met and have built up in my head. They make up for things being relatively calm when its quiet at the apartment, they lull me to sleep after I’ve put down the book and turned off the bedside light (and checked the alarm setting for the second time and get up to check the deadbolt because I’ve been lax about flipping it when I first get home). But sometimes, sometimes the daydreams stop.

Last night was one of those times.

When that happens I’m forced to not only take a stark look at reality (which I’m always aware of, that’s what my plans and scenarios usually focus on) but look at me, as I am: not how I want to be. Now that I’m single I find myself thinking back to relationships past and picking out the things I’d like to keep, the parts I liked, and leaving out the parts I don’t want to relive with whomever comes along, because of course someone will eventually come along, right? And there it is, the doubt. Now, granted, law of averages says I cannot possibly be through with all my allotted relationships at 29 years of age. And I’m not in any hurry because it really is rather soon after the split, but I do have to wonder, with so many missed chances in the past…will I always be, as Barbara Mandrell sang, sleeping single in a double bed?

I’m okay on my own. Somedays better. Most days my mind is too busy to think about it, and I think I prefer it that way. But there are things I miss. Having someone to lean on (not in a dependent kind of way, more a comfort thing), having someone to hug. I laid in bed last night with only the fan turning and the sound of the dog’s breathing surrounding me. I had left my eye mask off for once, for a little while, and the light coming through the blinds outlined the blank walls in the bedroom. The totally uninteresting ceiling. The stark relief of the pattern on my sheets.

Earlier in the day I had leveled with myself on some things. Self, you know it’s silly to keep thinking this person is a part of your life. That’s past and gone, not going to change, and you don’t even really want it to; do you? Well, no, it’s just nice to think about. But I’m right, I just need to stop.

So I did, and it was fine, until silence hit and my mind was still for the first time in months, and I felt the most alone I have ever felt. I reasoned with myself, out loud because it was just too damn quiet, and knew that I wasn’t a hopeless case. But the fear is there, the fear that while I’m sure I’ll eventually hang things on the bedroom wall, that I’ll definitely move again (I’m even toying with the idea of buying a house in a couple of years), the fear is that I’ll always just be going home to the dog.

Still, I don’t consider myself desparate for some sort of filler psuedo-relationship. I know better than that. I’ve been there before, years ago, and I don’t want to go back there because it’s just plain unappetizing. Still, I miss knowing that there’s one person out there who considers my every word and whim the utmost of importance. I miss being able to do little things for one special person–because while I may suck at being a wife, I kick ass at girlfriend level (either platonic or otherwise). I miss the other half of the pairing, my lobster as Phoebe would say, or that strange belly-button incompleteness that comes from one of those old Greeks that they talked about in the Butcher’s wife.

Oh go google it and give yourself something to wonder about.