Hello? Anyone there?

After a short hiatus, I am back! 

I have been dealing with a family issue that has been mentally and emotionally exhausting during the past month.  I’ve been coming to terms with a lot of stuff.  Life is way too complicated you guys!  I guess that’s what makes it so darn exhilarating!

During my hiatus, I found out that my dad is really sick and only has 6 months to a year left to live, I had the flu for two weeks, and then I went on a much needed vacation to San Francisco with one of my best friends.  It’s been a crazy month, and I feel like I’ve had a lot of days full of utter happiness and days full of nothing but darkness.  It’s insane how suddenly things can happen in life.  It’s like being in a car accident.  When it’s happening, you can’t believe it.  You even have that brief moment where you think you’re just dreaming.  But in the aftermath, it comes at you and you feel like you’re being crushed to death.  It’s a horrible feeling.  Of course all of sadness surrounding my dad and being in a germy hospital for four days straight resulted in my immune system weakening and my getting the lovely flu.  I then passed the lovely flu onto my mother.  Oops.

Amidst all of the stuff with my dad, I had completely forgotten that I had booked a flight to San Francisco for a week long excursion with my friend from DC (I’ll call her “D”).  I thought about cancelling it for a hot minute, but then thought about how much getting away would help me.  And it really did help!! It helped to get out of Memphis and be in a place where there is clean air (in the sense that it’s not stale with depression) and distractions of all sorts.  D and I did so much running around.  Along with the regular touristy things, D and I mostly wandered around getting lost and talking to strangers.  Also the food!  I felt like I was getting some kind of culinary therapy.  The delicious food that I ate brought me back to life.  The whole experience showed me that there’s so much more going on outside of my bubble of sadness.  Now that I’m back in Memphis, I’ve been working on holding onto that feeling of clarity that I had on my trip.  It’s been difficult, but every day I’m feeling a little bit better.

My dad and I have never had the picture perfect relationship.  We were best friends up until the middle of high school.  I guess we just didn’t have a whole lot in common anymore.  I was a female teenager with raging hormones, and my dad wanted to stay out of it.  I don’t blame him.  After falling out of touch with him, things were never quite the same.  We kind of walked on eggshells around each other, trying desperately to avoid having arguments, avoiding eye contact.  There was one point where I stopped talking to my dad completely.  I just disliked him and didn’t feel connected or related to him anymore.  Now that my dad is in the situation that he’s in, I feel like I’m having to make up for lost time.  I’ve been trying to spend more time with him.  We have our own little book club now.  Instead of young adult and mystery novels, we read books on India, Hinduism and philosophy.  It’s boring as hell sometimes, but I would much rather suffer through that than not have any significant memories with him. 

You may ask, “what the hell does any of this have to do with being a spinster?”  Well, it doesn’t have much to do with it except for the fact that I probably won’t have any fun and exciting stories about encounters with the opposite sex for a while.  But I will have stories about how I’m changing my life and figuring out what I want to be, who I want to be.  Time is precious, and I’d like to make a lot of self-discoveries while I’m young, and I’ll share these discoveries with you and everyone I love. 

And don’t worry; I’ll still be stalking people at coffee shops, stores, and the streets.  If I see any hilarious encounters between a man and a woman, OH you’ll know about it.  With the loving support of my family, my awesome friends, and a wonderful outlet in the form of this amazing blog, I’ll be fine.   And I’ll continue to crank out my crack pot theories about being a spinster and everything else in between.