u/Eastern_Spray_2213

It's nearly done. The big blowup happened, the relationship is fractured beyond repair. The scene needs tightening, but it stands. All that's left now is one monologue and the curtain scene, and the play is ready for a table read and workshop. So close, and yet I spent all day yesterday on make- work projects, because endings are hard. Not just the ending in the play, even though I've got that all mapped out, but the fact, that soon I will leave my leading ladies behind. Once they meet the world, they will no longer be all mine. Bittersweet.

I made mousakka with potatoes and eggplant and ate way too much of it for dinner. My granddaughter H and I went for a nature walk and discovered Dryad's Saddle, a fungi that grows on dead wood, and to my surprise is edible. She decided to make them her children, and gave names to them all, Lucy, Mina, Sparkle...I love her imagination. On the way back we played on the swings at the park. Now that the weather is better we want to be outside any chance we get.

H is still sleeping. Outside my window a mourning dove is calling plaintively. I always feel slightly haunted when I hear their song. I have hot coffee. One monologue and a very short scene. All I have to do is, start. I can do it.

In my dream last night, I tried to fall in love. There was no chemistry, no spark, despite me trying hard to ignite them. The other woman, a stranger, knew immediately. Still, I enjoyed her company and wanted to take it further. She refused to settle. In the dream I was sad, but felt immediately relieved on waking. A dream leaves no unwanted consequences. Sometimes I imagine how it would feel to celebrate an accomplishment over a glass of Chardonnay in a quiet Italian restaurant with a partner. But I know that kind of Utopia doesn't exist for people like me.

It's so important to teach children how to love sanely. There is a lot of suffering in the world because of insane love. I want them to know love that is free from possessiveness and unrealistic expectations. No eggshell waks, no emotional landmines, love where it's safe to take down the walls. The freedom to talk about failings and disappointments. Even the wisdom and respect to let go when the love has changed and the relationship no longer serves the people in it. And when it's over, the fortitude to carry grief without injury to self and others. I want love to be a safe harbor.

Can love be both, sane and passionate?

In her poem, Wild Nights, Emily Dickinson wrote, "futile the winds to a heart in port." She pits sane love against the ardor of intense infatuation. I've had wild nights and safe harbor, but never both at the same time. I adore and prefer romantic friendship over sexual passion. If I had to put a label on myself, sapio/demi sexual would fit most comfortably. Intelligent conversation and deep connection are my foreplay.

Recently I ended a romantic friendship. It was beautiful. It felt like spring mornings, luminous and light, without the pressure to be anything. It was all the romance and none of the sex. I got cold feet when we planned a trip together to a cottage. I don't know why, but I ran scared and made sure the adventure never got off the ground. Then I let our friendship sizzle out.

Virginia Woolf and Vita would have gone to the cottage with a devil may care attitude, letting intimacy play out in whatever form it presented itself. They would have accepted the risk and possible pain, but I'm not that brave, or perhaps that foolish.

I miss their company.

Ten years ago I left a relationship with a malignant narcissist. Just to be clear, this is not my interpretation of the situation but a medical diagnosis they received. As is so often the case with narcissists, I was the one seeking therapy, believing I was the problem. When the relationship ended, it became a situationship before finally taking its final death throe. Fortunately I had a very skilled therapist who allowed me to muddle through the ending until I finally found a way to live with it.

Fast forward ten years later, and I'm at a peaceful place in my life. Grandma, writer, mother, sister, friend. Intovert, on the spectrum before the spectrum was a thing. I often describe myself as "stubbornly single", when people ask me about my dating life, or lack of it.

This is how I see myself. On the porch in a rocking chair, surrounded by family and friends, earth mother. It's a good life. Tgere is nothing wrong with it at all. If you're ninety. Thing is, I'm not. And there was a time, not so long ago, when my life resembled a minor soap opera. There was up and down love coupled with solid friendships, parties and wakes and drama that was better than any Days of Our Lives episode. Erika Kane level drama. There was motherhood and grandbabies and premieres of plays I wrote all while balancing my life on a fingertip. There was so much colour in that life. And it paved the path to the narcissist.

A friend recently challenged me gently. "I wonder how things would be different if you called it peacefully independent instead of stubbornly single", he asked. I've been thinking on that. Stubbornly single represents a stone fort with the drawbridge up. Access denied, fully defended. Peacefully independent leaves room for possibilities. Possibilities of what I don't know, and I confess I'm a tiny bit tipsy as I write this. All I know is it's a shift in paradigm. A different way of looking at something. What would life look like with the drawbridge down?