deeplyshallow // moonlight ride

moonlight ride

If there is one regret that I find difficult to cop to, it is that I have failed to establish lifelong friendships. I suppose that, to a degree, this could be blamed on being uprooted a few times as a kid, just as I settled into the social circles every other kid was racing around, but I’d hate to pin it on my parents. It’s just that I find myself a couple years short of thirty, and I have never had a friendship that could be defined as anything more than a sprint. These days my friends are people I know primarily through text-based conversations; I am lucky to have seen some of them even once. Those whom I consider my most reliable and trustworthy friends are people I have rarely seen during the past three or four years, and yet still talk to several times a week. But this week it is painfully clear to me that I’ve bungled something. Because when email conversations don’t cut it anymore, there’s just not anybody who I can talk to about the things I genuinely need to talk about. I’m on my own.

This is something I don’t usually give myself grief for, mostly because I do alright on my own. I don’t generally need the company of other people, don’t usually want it. Other people have a shelf life, and my interest in them expires very quickly. So I am always surprised to find that sometimes I crave interaction as deeply as I do, and not only when I’m enduring some sort of crisis, but just because I am enjoying myself. I have a reputation of sorts for being a little cranky and antisocial, but that’s never really been the case. Cranky only when merited; asocial, perhaps, more than anti-.

California feels a little odd to me at the moment. It is beautiful — you should have seen the fog layer tonight, and the way the houses and porch lights on my street seemed to just float in it, there and not there at all — but at the same time it feels very strange. Unfamiliar. As if I suddenly have no idea what to do with myself. There is no question that this is really me that I am talking about, and not my town or state. All of those resolutions that I made yesterday, they’re not important, they don’t mean anything. The resolve to write more, that means something, means a whole hell of a lot, actually, and lately the urge is stronger than before, and yet the ability is weaker than it has ever been. Purposeless, maybe a little useless — that’s how I feel tonight.

Today didn’t quite go how I expected. That is, I didn’t really have any expectations for it, but as it draws to a close I realize that I have been listless and unhappy for most of it. Today was like a soda left standing and gone flat. You keep hoping for the bite, even just a tiny tingle, but nothing’s there.

I miss my family very much today. We have grown closer and more respectful of each other over the years; as we’ve grown up we’ve recognized those unavoidable passed-on traits that have finally ceased to disappoint us, and have further begun to unite us. All the time you hear people complaining that they never want to be like their folks, but we all exhibit tendencies. The older I get, the more I appreciate the ways that I am like my father, like my mother. For every one that I regret — like the genetic disposition to pack on weight — there are a dozen more that I cherish, like the ingrained love of road trips and mountains and cold weather, or the patience that comes with age.

I feel very contemplative tonight. Last night I felt much the same way. I took the Jeep for a moonlight spin up the 1, along the coast. It was cold out, but pleasant inside; the interior of the vehicle is very dark, almost as if it were intended for a night like that. I listened to the soft top flutter in the wind, and in places could even hear the ocean over the hum of the engine and tires. Nights like that are at once restful and saddening. You’re all alone in the world, and it’s wonderful, but: you’re all alone in the world.