Lonely in a Crowd: An Essay

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Hello All,

I am sleepless in Boston again. I had a bad experience where someone came into my yard and banged on my bedroom window last Monday and I have had trouble sleeping ever since.
I am here alone. I am almost always alone these days. I wrote an essay in December 2006 about my first experience with the feeling of loneliness. Most people would say I should consider myself lucky to have never felt it before the age of 32. I think it sucks to have to feel it at any age.

When I came home it was really hard. I had started to adjust and had felt like I had made some connections. I had started to feel better and more settled. I still struggled, but I was on my way. I had found a book club, been accepted into a writing group, joined a foodies club and had started connecting with girls at work. Things were starting to come together for me.

Since I broke my shoulder on February 22nd, I have been alone in my house almost all the time. I can't drive a car. I can't take myself to the doctor or to the grocery store. At first, everyone was checking on me and people would come over. As time has gone on I feel forgotten. I have always been very independent. I have never needed other people. I enjoy their company, but I don't NEED them. I have always been on my own and happy with that.

The pain was ungodly when I first fell and broke my shoulder. I broke it at the joint where it meets the ligament and it was and still is a nightmare. I couldn't even shower myself for the first 5 days. I was COMPLETELY reliable on others for the first time since I was a child. It was a horrible feeling. I think it is fair to say the isolation has been far worse than the pain.

It doesn't get easier. It gets harder and harder each week and over the last two weeks I have become very lonely and depressed, even crying on and off almost daily. I feel that the more depressed I get, the less people want to be with me. It is a vicious cycle. On the odd days that someone comes and gets me and takes me out, I am fine. I am just happy to be out and to have the company. Perhaps people are tired of checking on me or having to come and get me. Perhaps they don't realize that I am like a different person when I get to go out.

When something like this happens you find out who your real friends are and I have found out I don't have nearly as many as I thought I did. That has been a hard lesson. I look back at this essay and see that I was missing the connections I had with friends overseas. I still feel that way. I still don't feel like I have the intimacy and love with anyone here that I did with my friends in Korea. The person I talk to the most is my friend Mark in Moscow. I am surrounded by people here. I am within miles and not a long-distance call away and the person that talks to me several times a week and always makes me laugh and more importantly, lets me cry, is in Moscow, Russia. He shows me that he loves me and says he is proud of me for how I have handled this even when I have just cried my eyes out. He makes me feel good.

Don't get me wrong, there are a couple people here that have also shown their loyalty and concern, but not nearly as many as I would have thought and I can tell you, it is not the people I would have expected it would be. I really appreciate those friends as well. I guess I feel like if this happened to someone I cared about I would be there...on the phone...driving them around...camped out in their living room if they needed me, and that has not always been the case for me.

I had a couple of friends that were around all the time in the beginning and have not been around for the last couple of weeks. That has made these last weeks particularly difficult. Although this is true of more than one person, I admit I have taken it out on one friend in particular. I don't feel like he cares anymore. All my feelings and emotions have been intensified over the last weeks though. It has hit me really hard. I have even stopped looking forward to going back to work. I rarely get out of my pajamas and spend most of my time lying in bed. I have even lost interest in TV and reading.

I would love to come face to face with the idiot that drained that hose out their window in the middle of winter making the sidewalk a virtual skating rink. One wrong step and I am alone for 8 weeks. I said earlier I have always been on my own and that is the way I like it. That is true, but it was ON MY OWN, not alone. there is a difference, and in the last 8 weeks I have never felt so alone in my whole life. It is a feeling of desperation. I have never experienced anything like it and it is horrible. I know it is not the worst thing that ever happened to anyone, but it is definitely one of the worst things that has ever happened to me. I just keep telling myself I am on the mend and it will all be over soon. It just can't be soon enough for me. I want my arm back. I want my life back. I want all these feelings to go away.

Here is the essay I wrote. If you are interested on my discovery of loneliness and my perspective on what that means, read on. Thanks for reading my vent! I hope you are all doing better than I am!

Lonely In A Crowd...
By: Christine M. Hayes

I am home. I am surrounded by friends and family and yet I have this feeling I have never experienced before. To be honest it started in Guatemala. I was not sure what it was at first. It made me feel a bit sad. It made me miss people. It made me long for my friends. I realized it was coming back again and again and tried to identify it, but it was unfamiliar to me. Eventually it was like a light bulb lit up over my head! LONELINESS! Oh my god! I am lonely
This was a new feeling for me and one I admit that I never thought I could fall vulnerable to. I had certain ideas about what kind of people felt lonely. When I thought of loneliness I thought of desperate people searching for love-I have never cared if I find romantic love, in fact I go out of my way to avoid it. I thought of elderly people with no family who had lost all their friends to age or disease-I still have friends and family. I thought of the socially inept who never had romantic love or friends and family-I am a social butterfly. And yet, the feeling was definitely loneliness. How is that possible?

I started to examine this. I blamed my circumstances in Guatemala. Although, I meet people quite easily, I was there for four months. Most other people were there for a week or two at most. I was lucky in the beginning. I met several people who were there for five or six weeks. When they left the loneliness came. To add to that complication, the dangers abound for a woman traveling alone in Guatemala often did not allow me to go out unless I had an escort. That made things difficult when I was the only student living in my house. As much as I missed my friends in Korea, I started to look forward to returning to Boston. I know people in Boston. I would be close to my family.

When I returned to Boston I was overwhelmed. I had to buy a car, start a new job, find a place to live and was visiting my family in New Hampshire every other weekend trying to reconnect. I was so happy to be home and to be around my family. I was thrilled to get to know my nephew and to be more than a visitor again.

As time has gone by and I have become more settled in Boston, the loneliness has returned. At first I was frustrated and could not imagine how this could be. One weekend when I was feeling particularly lonely I went up to stay with my sister. Although I found some comfort in being with her and my brother-in-law, it did not stave off the feeling of loneliness. This has become increasingly frustrating for me, and I have had no choice but to examine it and try to understand the feelings.

I am so often surrounded by people, so how can I possibly still have bouts of feeling lonely? I started to think about the people I miss and what they represent. When I left Belgium I missed my two roommates and two very close friends the most. There are a few people in particular that I miss from my time in Korea. When I think about these people and the relationships I had with them, I realize they know me. They really know me.

Especially my best friends from Korea. They could tell by a tone or subtle body language what I was thinking or if I was uncomfortable, when others would never know. They understand my likes and dislikes and my hopes and my dreams and my quirks and desires. They know all my flaws and insecurities and love me and admire me regardless.

I realized that I do not have this with anyone here. I love my friends and family here, but after being away for so long I have changed and there is nobody that understands me like that here. This knowledge-this intimacy-came from spending a lot of time together and I have not had that with anyone here for years.

I only have two good friends in Boston (the rest are in New Hampshire and spread out all over the World), and although I am starting to make some new ones, they can't know me instantly. We can't share that kind of history immediately. I tired to explain this to someone the other night. It is great to have new friends and people you enjoy being around, but unfortunately intimacy takes time and there is nothing I can do to speed that process. The other tricky thing about new friends is that they come with their own lives full of people and obligations, and you have to be integrated into that slowly. That is hard.

Patience. I have to have patience. I have never been a patient person. This will be a great challenge for me. I have had fleeting thoughts of jumping a plane back to Korea or some other exotic destination. I have thought of running to another part of the country such as Florida or California. I then realize that I will have to deal with this in a new location. Even in Korea, if I stayed eventually my friends would leave. None of us are really permanent there. These are all only temporary solutions.

Realistically I have a lot going for me here. I have a great job where I get to make a difference. I have warm and caring colleagues that I have grown to care about very much. I have my family and I enjoy being with them. I do have good old friends here and some amazing prospects in new friends. I find I have to remind myself of these things on a regular basis.

I knew the adjustment would be difficult, but it has really just started to hit me recently. I am very lucky to have had such amazing friends and I know that they are my friends for life. One of my good friends from my adventures in Korea visited me in Boston in September and another one plans to visit next summer. I look forward to that visit and many more. I can meet them in all different parts of the world and, thanks to modern technology, I can talk to them on the phone and email them regularly. It is still hard to think of never getting to be part of their daily lives or to have them as part of mine. It is hard to imagine that we will never all be in the same room again and I will unlikely ever live in the same city with them again. These are things I still struggle with.

I know eventually I will have a group of people-of close friends-like that here. It is so hard to know there is nothing I can do to move it along. Waiting has never been my strong suit. I will be a good friend to those I have here and hope that eventually they will know me and love me, as my friends did in Europe and Korea.

If someone had told me a year ago that I could be surrounded by people and still feel loneliness, I would have called them crazy, and yet here I am lonely in a crowd of people. All I can do is acknowledge it and wait patiently for it to change

RED SOX RULE...YANKEES DROOL!

Friday, April 11, 2008

The Red Sox are playing the Yankees in Boston tonight!

I know, I know! Most of you don't think 'SPORTS FAN' when you think of me and that is true I guess, but there are some exceptions to that rule. I LOVE to watch sports if someone I care about is playing. I used to watch a friend of mine play basketball every week and I LOVED that. It probably helps that he is pretty amazing at it, but I really miss that. What I never admitted as a teenager is that I loved it when I watched my brother or sister in a basketball game. I didn't go often and would have never confessed to enjoying it so much (sibling rivalry and all), but I really did!

I also feel pride in where I come from and the sports teams are a part of that. New England, and Bostonians in particular, have a real attachment to their sports teams and none have captured our hearts over the years like the RED SOX. Even through an 86 year dry spell we believed damn it!

I admit to hearing some stories that are a little crazy, for example there was a guy who bought the house Babe Ruth was born in and ripped it down trying to break the curse. You know that idiot was out the night we won the World Series buying everyone beer and taking all the credit, when it is our dear Red Sox and all the fans, even the normal ones without enough money to buy a house just to rip it down, that deserved the credit. Believing is enough! I think that guy is nuts, ok? I said it, but the insanity of RED SOX fans and their persistence in believing and loving the team (even though they broke their hearts in game 7 of three different World Series before we finally won in 2004) is part of their charm! Boston fans don't give up.

Anyone who knows about Red Sox fans knows about the hatred we have for the New York Yankees. They say we always route for two teams, the SOX and whichever team is playing against the Yankees! I was once impressed with an encounter I had with a Korean guy in a bar in Daegu, South Korea. It was right after we had won the 2004 World Series. And yes, I had watched it at 8am my time and I did cry when we won. So, anyway, I am in this bar on the following Saturday night and quite drunk and this huge Korean walks by (he really was a large man and not just for a Korean) and he is wearing a New York Yankees jacket. Well, in my excitement (and inebriation) I gave him a shove and got in his face and yelled, "YANKEES SUCK!" I know, this is really NOT AT ALL like me. It took a moment for my friends to recover from the shock and start to grab me, but before they could he said in really bad broken English, "No, No, No...I like Red Sock, My girlfriend buy" as he grabbed the jacket and made a disgusted face. We hugged and bonded over the Red Sox recent win and my European friends thought we were both crazy! I was so surprised that he knew immediately that I must be a Red Sox fan. The word of the rivalry has made it to Asia folks!

With all of that said, and even with our success, a Boston Red Sox fan has pulled yet another stunt in order to assure our victory over the Yankees and possibly to get back at them for the "Curse of the Bambino." I have to say. I like this one. Harmless and yet adorable. I approve! I will think of it every time the Red Sox are playing at the new Yankee Stadium starting in 2009. Please see the New York Post article below for this clever fan's attempt to put a jinx on those dastardly Yankees! I LOVE IT!

I hope you are all well and the Sox will kick some Yankee BUTT tonight! GO SOX!!!!!

FROM THE NEW YORK POST:

HIGH'JINX' HITS YANKEES
By JOHN DOYLE, CHUCK BENNETT and JEREMY OLSHAN

NEW YORK -- April 11, 2008 --The new Yankee Stadium may be cursed!

A devilish Boston fan working on a concrete crew at the $1.3 billion stadium covertly buried a Red Sox T-shirt under what will become the visiting team's locker room to jinx the Yanks, two construction workers told The Post yesterday.

"In August, a Red Sox T-shirt was poured in a slab in the visitor's clubhouse. It's the curse of the Yankees," one worker said. "Nobody knows about it. It's in the floors, it's buried."

The workers say they now fear that they unwittingly helped hex their beloved Bronx Bombers.

"I don't want to be responsible for sinking the franchise," said a second worker, who witnessed the sabotage. "I respect the stadium."
The Post has withheld their identities because they are not authorized to speak to media.

This latest hex is above and beyond any typical ritual - like wearing a lucky shirt or hat - that fans typically do to boost their luck.

"It sounds a little unprecedented to me," said Tim Wiles, director of research at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown.

"I guess if the Yankees go 86 years in the new ballpark without a win we'll know if we are on to something," he said, referring to Boston's previous infamous losing streak after they sold Babe Ruth.

"If I was a Yankees fan, that is my house. I don't want a Red Sox [T-shirt] under my house," he added.

Chris Wertz, co-owner of the Red Sox bar Professor Thom's in the East Village, laughed at the ingenuity of the worker. "I won't be surprised in the least bit to see that visiting locker room torn up and relaid right away," he said. "This what makes the game special for baseball fans. It's not a mean thing, but something they will take seriously."

Red Sox fans, he said, will see the buried garment as a good-luck charm, especially after years of seeing the retired numbers of four legendary players displayed in Fenway Park.

It has long displayed "9" for Ted Williams, "4" for Joe Cronin, "1" for Bobby Doerr and "8" for Carl Yastrzemski - which comes out to 9-4-18, the day before the World Series that resulted in the last Red Sox championship until 2004.

Baseball historians said these kinds of superstitions are not something to be scoffed at.

"Curses start off very easily. It's all the power of suggestion and they take on a life of their own," said Dan Gordon, co-author of the 2007 book "Haunted Baseball." "Even the 'Curse of the Bambino' didn't really take off until the 1980s. Before then it was just hard luck," he said.

Mickey Bradley, co-author of "Haunted Baseball," said a worker is said to have buried an unknown good-luck charm in a water main trench of the current Yankee Stadium back in 1920. "Prior to that, they never they won a World Series," he said. Players can also bring curses to their teams.

"Look at the curse of A-Rod. The Yankees haven't won since [Alex Rodriguez] came to their game. There's probably more to that than a T-shirt," said Peter Nash, author of "Boston's Royal Rooters," a history of Red Sox fans.

"This just takes the rivalry to whole new level. If you look at 2004, the Yankees were up three games. If Boston lost that, seriously, the whole franchise would have been decimated," said Nash, who performed with the rap duo Third Bass before writing about baseball.

"I think there is a curse in effect already. Maybe the Red Sox T-shirt is like the icing on the cake, a nice little F-you from Boston," he said.

The year 2004, of course, was the year the Red Sox broke their own curse and won the World Series after beating the Yankees in the playoffs. Still, stadiums have long had their own curses.

One of them is the 1945 "Billy Goat" curse at Wrigley Field, the home of the Chicago cubs.

Legend has it that William Sianis placed a curse on the team after stadium staff refused to let him enter with his pet goat. The team hasn't played in the World Series since 1945.

Superstition in stadiums can also cut the other way and help a team.The Texas Rangers languished in their old stadium from 1972 to 1993, until they moved into a new ballpark the following year. Since then, the team won three division titles. More recently, the Tampa Rays may be cursed by their own new stadium, which was partially built over a cemetery.

Over the past decade, the team had the worst record in all of Major League Baseball four times and finished last place in their division nine times.
As for the buried emblem of hated Boston, the Yankees say they aren't the least bit worried.

"It sounds like a tall tale, and it would take more than a Red Sox T-shirt to put a curse on the Yankees," said team spokesman Howard Rubenstein.

john.doyle@nypost.com

Ode to 80s TV: The Nostalgia of "Diff’rent Strokes"

Sunday, April 06, 2008

Please indulge me for a few moments....

I am at home (with a broken shoulder as most of you know) and have been watching a marathon of Diff’rent Strokes (1978-1986). I am sure you all remember this show. I watched Diff’rent Strokes and The Facts of Life FAITHFULLY as a kid, and even with cable and all the shows we loved playing in syndication, I have not seen these shows on TV. The Brady Bunch has probably never been off the air and yet these two gems seem to have been lost in the cracks. Admittedly they were two of my fave shows as a child.

It is funny to watch the episodes and see HUGE stars with bit parts. People I hadn’t remembered being part of the program. Janet Jackson had a part for 4 years as Willis’ girlfriend and if I may say, she was GORGEOUS before all that plastic surgery (at least she didn’t go as far as Michael and LaToya, who clearly have the same surgeon...I have to check for breasts just to tell those two apart).

One of the episodes had Forest Whittaker as the school bully. Such a bit part. It is funny to look back and see him there. He looks the same only younger with no facial hair. Mr. T was in an episode and ref. the A Team (another great 80s program). And Kareem Abdul Jabar was on a couple of episodes (oddly enough, years apart) as a substitute teacher.

The other thing that strikes me as I watch the shows, as it has been SO many years since I have done so, is thinking about the lives of those kids after. I feel like you couldn’t go to the grocery store at any time in the 90s without at least one of those child stars being splashed accross all the tabloids. I guess Todd Bridges has gotten his stuff together, but they have all been arrested, on drugs and Dana Plato was dead (suicide by overdose) before she was 35. Okay, I guess that is depressing.

It does bring a sense of nostalgia for my childhood and memories of simpler times with less to worry about when Wed nights was all about Diff’rent Strokes and The Facts of Life, although I think it was Tuesdays originally and it moved (yes, I remember the night it aired...I have a freaky memory...The Dukes of Hazard was Friday nights at 8pm just before Dallas, I think Silver Spoons was on Mondays, Growing Pains was Wed nights, The Golden girls were Saturday nights...it is just the shows I really loved at the time). My biggest problems were had I done enough homework to get by with out any major trouble (I wasn’t nearly as anal as a child as I am now ) and had I managed not to fight with my mother and get myself grounded (in my house this meant no TV--cruelty!) that week.

Okay, thanks for indulging me on my rambling about Diff’rent Strokes. I will leave you with some other shows I would like to see on TV even if only for a one day marathon. Let me know if you remember them.I do love a good walk down memory lane!

Jennifer Slept Here

Charles in Charge (the original and the second one -- that was weird...same show and a totally different family)

Joanie Loves Chachi (did anyone else notice that HAPPY DAYS started out in the 60s and Joanie Loves Chachi was a modern 80s show???)

The Hardy Boys (Hey, I said just for a one day marathon...I am nostalgic and besides it was on when I had bronchitis and was home for a week in 1999 and I got hooked...you may be surprised...alas it was gone soon after and has not been back)

Square Pegs (Sara Jessica Parker’s first series and she was not nearly as stylish)

Rags to Riches (I LOVED this...do you remember the show about a rich man that adopted a gaggle of teenage female orphans?)

Solid Gold and/or Dance Fever (ok I am blushing, but I loved those shows with people dancing about in gold lamay and sparkles).

Double Trouble (remember the show with the twin red-haired girls)Kate & Ally (a classic)

WKRP in Cincinnati

Night Court (my mom loved this show)

Ok, that is a start. Let me know if you can think of any others! I do realize that you remember some shows better than they were, as times and TV have certainly changed...as have we. I had been very excited to find out that Emergency (as a child I fantasized about living in the fire house with Johnny and Roy), the Dukes of Hazzard and Soap had made it back to TV, only to be disappointed when I watched them again. Emergency had horrible camera work and BAD acting (sorry Randolph Mantooth I still love ya), The Dukes of Hazzard made me feel like if I lived like them I would slice my wrists, a feeling that did not present itself when I was a child, and Soap, well...Soap was just plain painful. I don’t think I made it through a whole episode. I am convinced I would still love some of these shows though.I have enjoyed my evening of Diff’rent Strokes after all! I hope you are all well and will never be forced to watch as much TV as I have, being home alone and unable to drive over the last 2 months!
Hugs, Christine xo

Thai Chicken Curry Stew

November 13, 2007


Hello Fellow Foodies!

I hope this email finds you all well! Perhaps I decided to start a food blog so I can stop bugging all my friends on Email/MySpace every time I get a new and exciting idea!

Although I have a ton of work to do reading thesis papers for a committee I volunteered for this week, I decided to make a chicken stew tonight! I started out with the idea of a plain chicken stew, but I didn't want to use any starches, so decided to get creative as to what I would add to the stew.

The end result is a Thai curry stew (that is what I am calling it, as I made it up). It includes mushrooms, onions, scallions, fresh cilantro, chicken (what is a chicken stew without chicken), a bag of frozen Asian veggies (water chestnuts, mini corn, snow peas, yellow and orange carrots, sprouts, etc), Channa Dal (a kind of lentil), green curry paste, a can of coconut milk and chicken broth. Now I let it stew for a couple hours until it thickens. And to top it off, dumplings? NO! I am going to throw in cubes of extra firm tofu instead!

YUMMY! I can't wait to try it and hope it will be as good as I think it should be (this one may rival the famous cowboy stew). It is super healthy as it has all those veggies, and besides the protein from the Channa Dal, tofu and the chicken, the Channa Dal also adds lots of fiber! Not to mention the way the chillies in the curry will get the metabolism revved up!

As most of you know, I don't measure anything when I make stuff up. I do it all to taste, so feel free to steal this idea and make it yourself. Let me know what you think!

Bon Apetit! Hugs, Christine

Cooking Creations: Chicken in Pumpkin & Coconut Curry

January 13, 2008

Hello fellow Chefs!

...and those of you who just love to eat and be cooked for...

I know some of you guys like to cook and experiment in the kitchen, so I felt like sharing a new dish I made up today. I am still in my PJs and have been cleaing and didn’t feel like going to the grocery store so I have raided my cabinets again and made something up with the ingredients within, and am actually excited to have dinner tonight! I sauteed chicken cut up in large bite-sized pieces with olive oil, chili oil, onion, garlic and ginger. Then I added diced tomatoes in lime juice and cilantro, Thai fish sauce, a can of pumpkin, a can of coconut milk and some curry powder. I threw in a bit of Chana Dal, a yellow lentil, for health (great for fiber and protein) and to thicken it up a bit. It is simmering now and I will serve it with fresh steamed jasmine rice which is in the rice cooker steaming away! I will also have a spinach salad. I love raw baby spinach! If I planned to cook it again I would have coconut cream instead of milk and fresh cilantro and scallions, but I think it is really quite good for grabbing stuff out of the cabinets! Feel free to try it at home! Hope you are all well and enjoyed your weekend.

Big Hug, Christine