Keeping My Own Company...

I've always thought that if one cannot enjoy their own company and pay attention to one's self, one can never be good company for anyone else...

Today my hubbie returns from Maryland where he was with his family as my sis-in-law has some surgical procedures (I couldn't go due to having had my own surgical procedures and thus, no time to take off from work...), me and the puppy have been spending some quality time.

Okay, scratch that--Hawthorne has been Dopey, Mopey, and... something else -opey, pining for the half of his human pack that will actually play endless fetch while I've been watching season two of Doctor Who. But mostly I've been relishing the quietness--the hum of the refrigerator every now and then, the ticking of the clock, the occasional bloop! from the fish tank. It isn't often I get three days in a row to sit with my contemplations, ruminating about whatever I please, googling cheese-making just for shits and giggles, and wondering what would happen if you were to lock a fundamentalist Christian in a room with a radical Muslim with the understanding that neither could leave until one or the other had converted--would there ever be a need to unlock that door to let them out? (I don't think so either...)

I've also been using my oodles of free time to read, a favorite past time of mine I haven't had the energy or time to indulge in... well, I'm not sure "years" is an understatement. I've missed reading getting lost in the worlds and lands of another writer's mind, diving headfirst into an alternate reality and losing sight of time and space as you meld your mind into those turning pages... But even more so, I've missed how it makes me think, what it stirs in my mind, how it creates a burst of neurological fire and sifts through inklings and ideas long since stored, covered in dust. Sounds a bit crazy, doesn't it? Doesn't it?

Reading during my teenage years was an escape--from Tom's heavy metal music, Mike's yelling, Sylvia and Cynthia's arguing (and alternate laughing spasms...). I learned the unique trick of being able to drown out even the most loud and obnoxious of noises when involved in such endeavors as reading and studying (much to hubbie's occasional annoyance). But I digress.

In all that reading (while insulating myself from the world around me), fiction and non-fiction, fantasy, biography, religion, science, horror, mystery, and anything else I could get my hands on, this is when seeds were planted. I wouldn't realize it until much later, of course, but when I started attending a certain bible-based institution, the seeds of the many conflicting ideas and philosophies and world views all came to fruition against the wall of conservative, fundamentalist ideology--and shattered my world.

Of course, I haven't really gotten a damn thing accomplished in the "real" world--dishes have piled up (Perk #1 of being single for three days: No running out of silverware or dishes!), laundry sits on the floor where I have dropped them (Perk #2: No one trips over your jeans when you leave them in the hallway overnight and bitches about it!), and no one interrupting at a climactic moment in the plot with an inane question, like "What did you say last night around 10:30 last night?" (Perk #3: I can forget about 10:30 pm last night).

But more than Hawthie has missed him, and while I do value alone time, sometimes it's better to be alone together, you know? Enjoy a companionable silence, laughing together at the same movie, conversing the pros and cons of whatever happens to be problematic. I miss shoving my feet under him on the couch when they get cold; the way he hums and sings when making dinner (or makes fun of mine when I cook dinner); arguing over who has more blankets; walking around the yard yapping with the neighbors; and a plethora of other things...

Having always been so solitary a creature, it's wondrously odd what love can do to change a person. If you would have asked me ten years ago if I would miss someone after only three days, I would have laughed. And perhaps "miss" is too strong a word...

But it will be nice having my companion back, if only so once again we can steal the covers from one another at night...

And laugh about it in the morning...

Together...