Blog From A Hermit Dot Com

I came across this poem in my archives the other day, so in honor of Poetry Month (and a quick post):

In haphazard desperation
This continued search for love
Skirts simplicity for complication.
Unheralded and quiet truth – above
All rewards those cherished others may impart,
Award yourself your loving heart.
Invaluable, illusive art,
But valid joy’s innate foundation,
Seed for all capacity to love
Without imposed condition.

It may not be the best poetry, but it’s an interesting retrospective for me.  Could be interpreted as narcissistic I suppose, but the value of self-esteem was my goal.

I was a college freshman when I wrote it. It was not part of a class assignment; just word therapy, a journal entry, commentary on what I perceived as the social chaos of my college dorm (all women).

I was aghast at the amount of energy my housemates seemed to perpetually invest in finding, talking about, preparing for and recovering from “dates.” The emotional melodrama seemed relentless. Someone was always ebullient over a new boyfriend or crying over a break-up. To me, it felt like a highly-valued and accepted bedlam of dating hysteria.

And most of it just seemed silly. Yes, I dated, but I don’t think I ever approached it with the enthusiasm and focus that seemed to motivate many of my college housemates.  For me, the importance of finding a mate was secondary,  not primary – an enhancement to life certainly, but not life itself.  It’s probably remarkable I wound up in a partnership at all.

Group living never did work very well for me. I was probably a hermit in search of solitude even then – a peculiar being from the start.