I was talking to a friend who feels like there’s something missing in her life because she’s not in a relationship and would like to be.  It’s harder for her too because she comes from a traditional family and at 34, all of her generation are hooked up and married off and makin’ babies.  She feels like she’s causing her parents to worry.  Of course I look at her and think, heck, you could be lying on the floor with a needle in your arm but instead you’re gainfully employed, have lots of friends and own your own home.  But I’m not her parents.

She said sometimes she hates coming home to a quiet house at the end of the day.  She was tellng this to a friend who has 2 children under 2 and the friend said, “What I wouldn’t give to come home to a quiet house at the end of the day!”  But the grass is always greener right?  It’s the ‘looking to fill the holes’, or the things that look like holes that make us human.  Otherwise we’d be sitting all day on the couch drooling into an empty potato chip bag.

Then my friend said, “but I know that to be happy I just need to realize it’s already inside me.  My happiness isn’t tied to external stuff like being in a relationship.”  Wow, the guru speaks.

I was thinking about this idea of what’s outside vs. inside. I’ve been reading Mark Epstein’s ”Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart” and he talks about emptiness and connectedness.  He says that when we feel connected to someone, we believe it’s all them, but really that feeling of connectedness is inside of us.  The person or the interaction with that person has just happened to bring it out.  But the challenging thing is that it won’t be consistent, the connectedness comes and goes like everything else in life.  We could see the person again next week and have a conversation with lots of uncomfortable silent spots and not feel the same way at all.

The relationship I feel this one the most is with my son.  This a.m. I was doing some sitting and breathing in my big comfy chair and Angus woke up early and came and snuggled in my lap under a blanket.  He’s not a super-snuggly kid so these times are pretty special and I felt *so* connected with him.  Me rubbing his back and watching the sun come up.  Him curled up and feeling cozy.

But I tell ya’, there are other times when he’s driving me nutty crackers that I don’t feel connected with him at all.  More like, I’m composing an ad for Kijiji in my head - “Quick sale, crazy-ass 4 year old, make me an offer”.   The connectedness just comes and goes.

And that happens with the other side of the perverbial coin that Epstein talks about – emptiness.  I get wicked Sunday blahs sometimes.  I’ll be minding my own business and then notice that this dark pall of blah, bluck, myeh, has come over me.  And it doesn’t seem to be connected to anything in particular like – boy I sure don’t feel like going to work tomorrow.  It’s just *there*.

So I first reflexively go into resist mode and wonder what about my environment or relationships with the people around me are So Seriously Lacking to cause me to feel this way?  But of course it’s not that, it’s just the emptiness that’s always inside.  The emptiness has felt like today is the day it’s going to enjoy it’s moment in the sun, or actually the dark pall.

And because I’m not experiencing the Sunday blahs right now I can be philosophical and know that if I didn’t know the emptiness of the blahs, I wouldn’t know the total juiciness of feeling connected.  I know that it’s only in knowing one that I can appreciate the other.  But that’s usually more than I can manage on Sunday blah day. 

On a Sunday blah day the best I can do is be aware.  That it’s time to pop on some Leonard Cohen or Lucinda Williams.  Pretend I’m an extra in a film noir.  Relax into being Existential Corilee who believes that life is emptiness, fear and dread and there’s no god.  And also believe that by tomorrow a.m. I’ll probably feel different.  Life will again be in color and the emptiness will tuck itself away until the next time.