The Solitary Bitch

There is a book for The Solitary Witch. But is there a guidebook for just practicing solitude as a lifestyle preference? Introversion as orientation? I'm sure if you've heard of it you'd recommend QUIET, but I'm not sure that's exactly what I'm wishing for...

I still have so many hang-ups that snag me and get in the way of comfortably guiltlessly un-self-consciously being alone and doing things alone. Not feeling like there is something wrong with me for being SUPER DUPER HAPPY in solitude. Not feeling like every minute I choose to enjoy by myself is a cruel rejection of my fellow human beings, friends, wife and family: a symptom of being a selfish sociopath.

Why? Maybe because I was punished for it as a child and young adult, and called a bitch BY MY FAMILY and a snob in school for no reason except I sought out time alone more than I wanted to share time with others. I saw my dad punished the same way. Though he was not called a bitch for it, I saw how other people in our family took my dad's reclusive ways very personally as an insulting offense to them. It was cruel nonsense, too, considering that my dad was the most openly, genuinely and inclusively kind and loving person AND the most generous in my whole family (and really of anyone I knew growing up).

So much of the B word is sexism and misogyny aimed at girls and women perceived as REJECTING people, especially boys and men. Of not being kind and loving. Of not being emotionally available and socially accessible. Pretty much every choice we make that does NOT appear to include or consider others is perceived as bitchy. Like being alone. Reading a book. Not answering the phone or responding to texts. Making plans to spend time alone and doing it. 

This shit is so fucking exhausting, oppressive, tyrannical BULLSHIT.

This year, right here in January, a couple of themes have emerged for the upcoming twelve months: FANTASIES and STOICISM. I am giving myself permission to visualize, explore and even voice (within reason) ALL of my fantasies, not just the ones that are sexy, social or "sell".

As I approach my fiftieth birthday, that is my golden gift to myself: to dream and focus on a radiant life built on wishes that will sustain me as a mature human, and developing and exercising more of my natural strengths. Stoicism is a key and tried and true framework encouraging me to dispense with apologizing for it, or seeking to mitigate the discomfort other people feel when some of us practice being our best and better selves. Stoicism provides permission to stop engaging in the inefficient and counterproductive displays of emotion and co-dependent constantly-available enmeshment I was taught by immature people equaled connection, empathy, and other things you need to display and provide on-demand in order to qualify as not-a-bitch. It hasn't been working, and has made me MORE of an actual bonafide bitch, not less.

Happy New Year, motherfuckers. I'm sleeping alone tonight BECAUSE I LOVE IT, NOT as a rejection of my spouse. Everyone needs good rest and deep uninterrupted sleep. Some of us get that best in solitude, at least every so often.

I love this moonless rainy winter night, and wishing one another sweet dreams.

Enjoy nature AND GET OFF YOUR FUCKING PHONE!!

Taking a walk on a woodland path -- no power lines, no electricity, supposedly peace and quiet -- some fucking bitch is YAPPING ON HER FUCKING CELL PHONE. Why the fuck don't you stay home and get on a treadmill? The sight and sound of you disgusts me. I know that's a hideous thing to say and even worse to truly feel, so I'm working on it and trying to be kinder.

Then we encounter a cunt who is not only talking on her phone, SHE HAS IT ON SPEAKERPHONE!! So *EVERYBODY* gets to hear some damned fool yapping in that electro-microwaved amplified lo-fi way. YOU INTRUSIVE INCONSIDERATE CUNT!!!

I hate people and I hate their out-of-touch device addictions. Get in touch with your surroundings and the people present in your physical space and GET OFF THE FUCKING PHONE, shitholes!!

More Bitching about Neighbors

I even feel bitchy about our mostly-GOOD neighbors. Because the truth is that I do not want to have visible neighbors at all.

I don't want to see my neighbors, I don't want to hear my neighbors, and I don't want them to see or hear me.

I don't want to see their dog, or see/smell/step in their dog's shit, especially in our own fucking yard. I don't want to live close enough to a neighbor's yard that wherever they throw their dog's shit or direct their dog to squat that the smell of it drifts over to my life in my yard. Especially if they have a black lab or large dog with soft, wet, giant shits.

I don't want to HEAR my neighbors' dog(s), and especially do not want to hear that low, persistent woofing for sometimes hours without ever once hearing my neighbor say "shuttup" to the pesky motherfucker. I also don't want to hear any neighbors' tiny dogs and their chirpy, anxious yip-yip-yipping.

I do not want to hear my neighbors at all. Not his daughter's boyfriend parked in the driveway talking on his cell phone like a little bitch, not his worker bees, not his friends, not his cunt of a lazy ex who honks when she pulls up instead of hauling her fat ass out of the car.

I do not want to hear my neighbors' power tools or hammers or engines starting up or car doors slamming or VOICES. I don't want to hear any of that EVER.

I don't want to hear my neighbors' engines revving or cars warming up. And I don't fucking EVER want to hear the sound of a large vehicle's back-up warning system, those brain dead beeps you can hear from blocks away. I am glad that I learned this because now I know never to ever live within a mile of any place any sort of dump truck, loader, pick-up & delivery vehicle, or garbage truck visits regularly. No carpet store, no nursery with landscaping materials like bark, no city facility with large mounds of gravel.

I don't want to see my neighbors' friends. I don't want to know who they are, and I certainly don't want them thinking they can cut through my fucking yard to get to his.

I don't want to see or hear my neighbors' kids or even know they have any, whether they be screaming infants or sullen teenagers. I don't want to wonder whether or not I should call them cops when they have a party or a fight. I don't want to fucking KNOW if they're having a party or a fight. I want no auditory or visual or olfactory evidence of those things to penetrate my peace and quiet in the center of my property.

I don't want my neighbors animal shit or dead-car fluids or septic tank seepage or lawn and garden chemicals to sully any of my own groundwater or picturesque streams.

And if a cougar ventures into my yard I want to be able to kill it. With a gun. I guess that's a little off topic.

I don't want my neighbors to know whether or not our lawn is mowed or whether or not we even HAVE a lawn. I don't want them to know whether or not there's moss on our roof or if I'm standing paralyzed in the morning dew feeling wet grass tickle my ankles. I don't want them to know what I'm wearing or not wearing when I'm inside or outside. I don't want them to gawk when my girlfriend absent-mindedly sticks her hand in her bra and fondles her breast while standing at the kitchen window.

I want to be able to shoot anybody who trespasses, and for it to be obvious what is mine and how you should fucking keep out. I don't want any fucking public trails inviting strangers to mosey on by or through, way too fucking close for comfort. I probably wouldn't ever shoot someone, but I at least want to be able to look at them with extreme hostility and tell them they're not welcome, not now and for their own safety, not ever again.

I need a buffer. A deep, wide, green, dark buffer no one can see through. I want to make believe that I am untouchable by people surrounded by a thick denseness of forbidding nature. I want to have chickens, but I don't know about roosters because they are loud, and they are loud in the morning, which is the worst.

I understand how mean and unsociable it is to not want to get to know your neighbors. To pretend they don't exist and avoid making eye contact with them. I do think that is missing out on something good. But I feel in my bones that I'm missing out on more by not having quiet wet growing places all around me to explore and get to know intimately, like I and my closest family are the only ones to smell and touch and investigate and hear them in all the decades that I live there.

I'm sad that the possibility of having this kind of freedom from others and privacy is nearing impossible. IS impossible if even a small percentage of the people in the world demanded it. That this place is just overrun with people and their sounds and their dog shit and their own shit.

I feel sort of petrified by the fear and likelihood that I'll never have this. That there will always be neighbors in my peripheral vision. That I'll never be able to melt into green invisibility.

Even if you're able to afford a few acres out in the woods or country, sound carries farther where it's quiet so you just need more. And you have to be constantly vigilant everywhere now for where they'll put the next landfill or development or resort or border patrol station. People are everywhere and most of them show no regard for maintaining a big space cushion between each other. They show no shame over their sounds and growling oversized useless pickups and stupid fucking mobile phone conversations. I SHOULDN'T KNOW THIS MUCH ABOUT YOUR STUPID LIFE!! Not without using stealth, anyway. Or reading your stupid blog (like this one).

I don't want to see the headlights of the cars pulling into my neighbors'. I don't want them to be able to penetrate the gloom that should surround me.