Hey girlie you might need more therapy
One of my least favorite things is noticing that my life is still happening, right now, exactly like this.
I think it’s a Four thing.
I’m getting the now-familiar restlessness, the need to get out and away, to hollow out to the barest minimum of myself, to cry behind my cat eye sunglasses on the 4 train because a guy on the platform was playing Fast Car. To do my Sunday crosswords in a bar so I can ignore everyone, and get overly invested in an obscure hobby like 18th century stay-making.
I think of a CS Lewis passage, the one about there being no safe investment when it comes to loving people. He describes a life devoid of love, as one with “hobbies and little luxuries,” kept safe from heart break in a “casket of … selfishness.”
It sounds nice. (To quote my favorite philosopher, Rachel Bloom: “Without love, you can save the world”).
My therapist wanted me to have a plan for the rest of my thirties. She originally phrased it as my “single years” but I whimpered at the phrasing; it seemed so overwhelmingly bleak. But now, I think I could come around.