Twelve years somewhere with nobody, and now too much of everything
Posted as twelve_winters_north
- Looking for
- one dominant, slowly, with a great deal of ordinary time in it
- Experience
- Almost none in practice. Twelve years of working out what I wanted.
- Around
- the west end, Toronto
For twelve years I lived in a town six hours north where the nearest person who might have understood any of this was theoretical. I did not look. There was nowhere to look. I read, I thought about it, and I let it be something that would happen in a different life.
I moved back last spring. Forty seven, the west end, and the problem now is the opposite one. There are hundreds of people. Choice turns out to be its own kind of paralysis, and I have spent eighteen months being cautious in a way that from the outside probably looks like disinterest.
What I have in my favour: I know precisely what I want, because I had twelve years with nothing to do but work it out. One dominant, a long slow dynamic, and a great deal of ordinary time inside it. Not a schedule of events. Somebody whose regular company I have, with a real authority in it that does not need announcing.
What I have against me: I have almost no practice. I know myself and I do not know how any of this actually works between two people in a room. My entire experience is one relationship in my twenties that had elements of this in it and no language for any of them.
Not looking for a crash course. Not looking to be anybody's rediscovery project. And not looking for somebody who wants to hear about the small town, which was fine, and is not the interesting part of me.