I'd Invite You In, But My Life's a Mess

So this is my life: Sitting at a wedding in Somerset with a handful of single women in their very late 30s and early 40s, listening to them and their carefully cultivated aren't-I-a-character stories. You could practically see them convincing themselves as much as the rest of us that they were having a grand old time.

I guess it could have been worse.

As for me, I didn't say a word. Because I couldn't have what I really wanted – the person, or a person, who literally makes my face light up as much as the bride's did whenever her intended would ring her – I proceeded to stuff my face with massive amounts of things I could have: (crummy) food. Bad hamburgers on (buttered) buns. Bad trifle. Some weird fig tart. Bad wedding cake with icing flowers of a bizarre consistency. And so when all of the single ladies were outdoing themselves with tales of their general fabulousness, I was sitting there just willing the minutes to pass until I felt a little less full. (Also a little less cold, but never mind about that.)

I was told upon arrival that there were no single men at the entire wedding (I've never met a guy at a wedding anyway, but you never know), but I did manage to find one. Turns out the backup guitar player for a friend of the bride's who performed a couple of songs was single. He was also Tom Thumb-sized. I literally could have rested my drink on his head. When he's not busking in various European countries, he sells chestnuts at the Manchester Christmas market. He travels everywhere with a tent so he doesn't have to pay for hotels. He doesn't like cake.

***

I'm not so much tired of being alone as I'm tired of being tired of being alone.

Last night after I spoke to the New York editor I thought about who to call first and burst into tears: The only person I wanted to speak to was my mother.

The last time I wanted to speak to my mother so badly was in the winter of 2004, a few months after she died, when I was offered a permanent job in London. I cried holding the offer letter, a good long cry for all the things that would happen in my life that I would never get to share with her. Then I folded up the idea of talking to her and stuck it in a drawer that hasn't been opened since.

Until last night. I thought about calling my dad, but he projects his dreams onto me. He doesn't hear about the weeks of only peanut butter and porridge and the chasing of cheques; he only hears the glamour of living abroad, something he himself wants but may never do. My grandmother and my sister both want me to come home at any cost. Of the entire family, only my mother ever was capable of just listening, instead of projecting her own wants and dreams onto me. (She had just one want, which was for me to be happy. I remember making the dean's list in college, and my mother saying that was great, but that she hoped I also was having a good time.)

So I tried to figure out what to do with myself and eventually wrote an email to one of my best friends in the US, trying to sort out how I felt about the job. I found myself typing: This is the first I'm writing it – really admitting it, I guess – that I haven't been very happy in London lately.

I could pin it on lingering isolation from BN2, the financial straitjacket that's mostly kept me from going out, the lack of single female friends… But one thing is clear: I don't have control over whether and how and when I meet someone, if I ever do, but I think I'd care less about that if I were happier with the rest of my life, which is something I do have control over. I need to figure out whether the things that are making me unhappy will be fixed at all if I move, or if I'll just take them with me.

Deeply unhappy people are like drowning people. They can pull you under with them. I'm not deeply unhappy but I don't want to get so much as a step closer to it. I imagine it's like bingeing: It's never too late to stop going down that road. I don't want to waste any more time being less happy than I could be, feeling like there has to be more than this.

The question is: What is it?