God Wants Me to Have a Red Sequined Dress

I’ve been fretting again about whether I should move back to Michigan or not. I came back from my Thanksgiving visit entirely at peace, and that sense of perfect well-being lingered for weeks: All is as it should be, I am abundantly cared for at every moment, I live in a veritable ocean of love, with friends and family members all over the country.

Besides the ones in this or that city, I have quite an amazing set of online-only or mostly online friends I’ve been in touch with for years.

How I could say I am lacking the slightest thing when it comes to love and friendship?

I hoped this tranquil state of mind would last forever; of course it did not. A couple of weeks or so ago, I found myself feeling terribly depressed. I woke up one Saturday not being able to think of a single reason to get out of bed and wishing it were physically possible to sleep for 48 hours, until Monday morning: TGIM!

I’ve noticed that work can be a powerful way of taking one’s mind off some other gloomy preoccupation, but wanting to sleep until Monday because I couldn’t think of anything to do seemed like a different kind of thing.

Then I had the thought that I’d already waited so long that my childhood home had changed hands (it hasn’t quite, but will one of these days)—did I intend to wait until both parents were gone? And then I was all upset again, and still am.

My parents are no longer spring chickens—heck, since they had me when they were relatively young, 22 and 24, I’m no longer a spring chicken myself—and I really like the idea of being able to see them often and to help out should help be needed. Just sitting together watching a DVD or talking over one of Dad’s dinners is a very pleasant thing.

But, besides the fact that this would be a major move, I question my motives: Is this about trying to claw my way back into the womb because I’m scared to live, or just can’t figure out how to? (I predict that my mother’s brow just furrowed.)

Does it reflect a failure to get a life?

I do seem to have less of a life than I once did, and to feel less connected here in San Francisco. Time was, I had many good friends here, and now I have few. I was down to three in-person local friends, and now, with the departure of David and Lisa, I am down to one, though if you have to have just one friend nearby, Tom would be a good pick.

My friend Lisa M. thinks what this reflects is that it’s harder to maintain a life as you age, particularly if you’re single; couples have at least one companion built in.

On the other hand, don’t lots of people live near their families, because they like to? Didn’t people used to live right near their families their whole lives, sometimes even in the same house? And didn’t those people probably have a strong sense that they belonged somewhere, a feeling I am lacking at the moment? (After Thanksgiving, I had the very nice feeling that I belonged anywhere and everywhere.)

Unfortunately, my decision-making process has long been broken, given that it can churn for years without producing anything resembling a decision, which phenomenon can be observed whether we’re talking about a move across the country or the selection of new socks.

And I’m pretty sure I use the tenets of Buddhism to cripple myself: Just a thought, just a thought, just a thought—ouch! OK, I will pull the nail out of my foot. Not just a thought.

So how do you tell the just-thoughts from the I-really-want-thises? I’ve never been able to figure this out, probably due to overdependence on my brain, which is the part of myself that speaks the loudest. It’s particularly useless for decision-making, once the basic facts have been established, because sooner or later the opposite of the most compelling thought will spring forth, and sound just as compelling.

The Twelve Steps talk about seeking knowledge of your higher power’s will for you. Assuming you have some sort of higher power—it doesn’t literally have to be God; there are many concepts—how do you know what it thinks you should do?

Isn’t a person with a literal and detailed understanding of her higher power’s will what we call schizophrenic? “God said I should buy three socks, one yellow, one blue, one pink. The pink one should be made out of wool …”

I suspect helpful messages are coming all the time, and that I have learned too well to ignore them, out of fear or laziness. There is probably some little voice that says, “I’d like to do this! It sounds fun,” to which I reply, “Just a thought, just a thought.” Or, “Well, I can’t do THAT. Because of this, that and the other reason.”