Have You Looked Behind the Couch?

When someone’s dumping you, or you’re dumping someone, have you ever heard or said, “I just need to find myself?” Come on, let’s see some hands. That’s better. Okay, now let’s just see the people who have actually said it. I notice there are a few. Good. Could one of you please, please, tell me what that means?

I have no head for science yet there are snippets of the Theory of Relativity that I understand better. Okay sure, until recently I was much heavier. A big guy. Maybe at that size “finding myself” didn’t present a problem. I was hard to miss. To steal a phrase, wherever I went, there I was. So, is this just something that petite, svelte people have an issue with?

Honestly, when someone looks at me and utters that phrase, I’m truly perplexed. I have to fight back the urge to reply, “but you’re right here.” Maybe I’m dense. I don’t understand. Even if I make the leap of faith that “something’s clearly wrong,” I struggle to try and picture the journey that lies ahead of the speaker of that phrase. Where do you start? We all have junk rooms where we live. Or a junk closet. In my case, it’s my garage. No room for cars in there; too much bric-a-brac. If I was lost somewhere in my garage, it could truly take years to find myself. And because it’s creepy and full of spiders, I might as well just give up the hunt before it begins.

I’m not generally the kind of person who rejects others’ experiences simply because I can’t relate. But I’ll confess (please keep this amongst yourselves) that I don’t believe that there’s ever been a human being on this planet who really had an urgent need to find themselves. When ending a relationship, I think it’s a simple translation to, “I don’t wanna hang out with your sorry butt anymore.” But, admittedly, that doesn’t have a lofty ring to it.

Oh sure, sometimes we all need periods of quiet where we can reflect. I’ve never found that too useful; I always end up thinking about food or the waitress that served it to me. Still, it might come in handy.

As I’ve aged, I’ve certainly learned more about myself and do what I can to apply the best of the lessons I’ve learned. I just don’t know how I could’ve gone out and done that on purpose. Who knows. Maybe there’s a club somewhere, where this magical experience can occur in a truncated period of time.

It also seems contradictory that one would better find themselves outside of a relationship. I always thought that a good relationship was central to finding ourselves. Isn’t it in our interactions with other people that we discover who we are?

I suppose I’m revealing myself as not the kind of person who would travel to sit on a mountaintop and meditate. After all, it’d just make me hungry and there’re no drive-thrus in Nepal.

I have a close friend who, years ago, was hooked, lock, stock and libido, on an attractive younger woman. It was torrid. As she struggled to get away from him, she assured him that she simply, desperately, needed to find herself. The sad part was that he related this to me as if it all made perfect sense. He got upset with me when I chortled. (Ah, he was hurting, I don’t blame him.) “Hey, not everyone is like us,” he said. “They haven’t spent as much time inside themselves.” (And here, all along, all I thought I wanted was to get inside someone else. Oh well.) He chided me and accepted her explanation as valid and significant. In the end, he accepted her exit. Ah, love! The things it can make us believe!

My friend is a passionate, talented artist. A hermit and an iconoclast. Years later he discovered that the object of his affection was unhappily married, with two children, living in suburban hell. I’ll tell you, she should’ve looked in my garage first. Far less daunting and she might’ve found a better self behind the discarded tire, near the box full of my old 8-track tapes.

So here I am, unsure whether or not I’m simply being unfair or truly seeing things for what they are. I suppose I won’t really have an answer until I find myself. Maybe I’ll start in the hall closet.