By Maria Padhila
I believe I must be predisposed for sadness this time of year. There was always the dismal prospect of another year of school, plus long nights, dead food, shivering. Then the fall kicks off Isaac’s busiest work and play season; and most recently the season has piled on, like another heap of dead leaves, Chris’s departure for Burning Man.
It feels like everyone else is doing the equivalent of buying new clothes and notebooks and cheering their team against a bright blue sky, and I’m… going back to school. Sitting in the library as the Sun sets and the fluorescent light sharpens, getting colder and hungrier and of course — alone. Me and the books, thank goodness for them.
A woman with two lovers and a beloved child and a few good friends who will forgive her nearly anything, alone? Well, there’s no appealing to rationality when one is living in that feeling that there is not enough. It’s a feeling common to polyamorous people, counter-intuitively — after all, isn’t poly all about getting more? But it carries the flip side of zero-sum thinking: If there’s more for him or her, it’s clear that means there’s less for me.
I feel very lonely. And I have no “reason” to.
I realized that what was operating in me was very much like a dietary deficiency. You crave and crave, because your body is in a state of panic. But all the bread in the world won’t fill you when what you’re missing is zinc or B-12.