thawing

today was the first day i ever got to spend, face to face, with my workmates. we went for coffee at a dunkin donuts around the corner. three generations of us at a table (perhaps three and a half). it was so familiar, yet so new. painfully so. 

i didn't wear my mask for the first time in two years. i knew i was marred, tired, unkempt. but i didn't care. i felt a need to be free, to be seen, to see.

we laughed, talked, imagined new ideas for projects. started brainstorming. it was a glimpse, a recollection of normality. what life was like not so long ago.

later, A messaged me, shared a little glimpse of her life, another world, filled with people. it reminded me keenly of the life L used to tell me about. lives filled with people that have nothing to do with work. i haven't known this since grad school. 

if i think back now, every night, as i have for years, i go home to an empty apartment. i watch something, and my laugh echoes in the empty apartment. i call my friends, my parents, and my words echo in the empty apartment. i listen to, or play, music, and it echoes in the empty apartment. i don't feel alone, but physically, i am, and have been for so long. when did it become so normal?

most of my friends, pursuing our careers in science, are like me. a lucky few found partners along the way, had families (human or pet). almost all of my women friends who did changed the trajectories of their scientific careers to lower-stress alternatives in order to pursue families instead. the rare few who clung to both dreams are stretched thin to the breaking point, juggling the dual burdens of a high-pressure career and young parenthood. those few are considered the success stories. i look at them with equal parts admiration and trepidation, knowing i will never match their achievements. i will consider myself fortunate enough to just succeed in this career. 

i've given my entire life to it. when i was in my early twenties, idiotically naive and freshly broken-hearted, i let work take over my life and never looked back. i thought it was what we were supposed to do and no one taught me otherwise. for a long time since then i have barely have had the energy or will to do anything outside of work. i have sacrificed my body, mind, and multiple friendships for it. and in that slow, pitch-drop blink, the chapter of my youth was over. i didn't notice until years afterwards that i wasn't young anymore. years went by where i didn't even look into a mirror, because what i looked like was utterly irrelevant to my ability to work. then, one day i did, and was shocked. facing the lines on my face, the white hair spreading, the slowing of my body and mind, i started to question my decisions, but it was already too late for that.

tomorrow i go to meet with the friends i have made here. each of us, living alone. i found them to be determined yet slightly lost, like me. we gravitated together, grateful to fend off our loneliness. we are all in nearly similar stages of our lives. S, a postdoc, supported by a tenuous temporary contract, the future still a question. K, fresh out of graduate school, hired into a permanent position like me, uncertain of herself for she has never been truly tested by independence. and i, with some years of postdoc experience under my belt, more certain and yet still uncertain. all of us, single women, nearing or in our thirties. the images of the futures we dream of were seeded by older generations who lived in a different world. we have only known, for our adult lives, and even our childhoods, transience. having to drop everything - our connections, our friends, our families - at a moment's notice to follow the next carrot in our careers, hoping that one day it leads to what we are all looking for. stability, a reputable position, financial security, and maybe a glimmer of hope that we will then be able to settle down and build the families we are taught we should have. 

but can we settle down? how do we settle down? we have known nothing but how to uproot ourselves. even now i sleep on an air bed, my beautifully spacious apartment - my first adult apartment, one i can be proud of that is not a college dorm - still furnished as if it was with temporary ikea furniture, unwilling to invest in better quality pieces when i know i must move again in a year or two. even now i don't know how to make adult friendships outside of the workplace. i don't understand the cues of the society and culture i never dwelt within. i have just learned enough to get by unnoticed. platitudes. surface gestures. the right phrases.

today, seeking something different, i delved deep into the recesses of the life i used to live, looking for human connection. instead i found a spirituality that i had forgotten. and even that was a solo venture. a soliloquy. i gave it to A anyway, and it connected us briefly before sleep took her.

and then i lay here, thinking and writing and listening to the incessant fan echoing in my empty apartment, after she disappeared into the ether again. the paths i could have taken were myriad, once. and now i have but one left to walk before me.