meg smitherman

Lately life feels like a series of isolated joys and sadnesses. I would say rollercoaster, but that implies at least some level of heightened experience, and at the very least, screaming. Instead, I find that I’m either feeling generally content (as content as I can be when I live with two people I don’t really like and when I can just barely afford to live), or mildly depressed.

I’d rather be cycling through intense enthusiasm and deep sadness; at least that way I’d feel excited about something. Part of it, I think, is the summer doldrums. I’m never happy in August. My only big breakups have occurred in August. I almost always have a bout of serious depression in August.

So maybe, relatively speaking, it’s been a good August, and I’ll come out of it feeling especially relieved that I made it through only slightly scathed.

On the other hand, it still sucks. I seem to have lost the ability to stay entertained by any piece of media, I haven’t been sleeping, and when I do sleep it’s too deeply or too fitfully, and I wake up with a sore jaw. Work is stressful, the weather is hot, I seem to have a million unpaid bills and expenses that I’ve put off until the last second, and everything I eat tastes vaguely disappointing.

It doesn’t help that I’ve been dating. The worst is that these dates aren’t hilariously bad or terrible. They’re fine, and the men have been fine, but I haven’t felt a spark with any of them. I’m beginning to think I’ll never feel a spark, and I’ll end up as I always expected I would: middle-aged and alone, sharing a house with a dozen or so senior chihuahuas. Not that I could afford even an apartment in LA that could fit a dozen chihuahuas, let alone a house.

It’s not as if the year so far has been a total bust. I wrote a book and got promoted, due to an office relocation my commute time has halved, and I can finally afford to live without putting expenses on my credit card (which is maxed out now anyway). But it’s August, it’s interminably hot, and I feel like I’ve run out of things to be happy about.

God, that sounds depressing. But it’s true. Without a project or a goal, I lose my joie de vivre. Unfortunately my project lately has been dating, and interacting with strange men is a hobby that’s doomed to result in disappointment.

There are things I know I want, but which are so out of my control that I’ve pretty much despaired of ever having them. I yearn for a home of my own. I yearn for cool weather. I yearn to publish a book. I yearn for a boyfriend. I yearn, I yearn.

I’m just stuck, I’m stuck, and I’m ready to move forward but I don’t know how. Isn’t that always the way, with me. And, as always, I will meditate and read tarot and cry and write to let it out. And eventually, something will jolt me out of this empty drifting, and I’ll be happy, and I’ll think, “I have to remember this for next time. I have to remember I wasn’t always adrift.”

Until that time, I’ll continue to sleep poorly and I’ll wake up tired and I’ll watch half an episode of something and read half a book and lie in bed listening to Patrick Wolf, and I’ll wonder what the fuck I’ve done with my life.