Alone Again, Naturally

I just dropped Akiiki off at the bus stop, to spend Christmas and New Year’s with his family in Kampala. The Intern left yesterday for California. I’m alone on the compound at Plot 26, Samuel Doe Road, Gulu Town Uganda, except for the guards and Pamela the housekeeper.

I don’t mind being alone. I actually like being alone. I’ve developed a vibrant, if borderline loopy, interior life, and I quite enjoy my own company. It’s just that I’ve just never felt so lonely as I do at this very moment.

I have never, EVER questioned my life’s choices as much as I have right this second. How did I get to be 46 and have no immediate family, no husband, boyfriend, booty-call, whatever, to share my life with??? Maybe I should have gone ahead and married the only man I was ever engaged to, The Hapless Haitian. We’d have been divorced more than a decade by now, but maybe I would have had one of his big-headed children to keep me company, to be my “family.”

Hmm, maybe the Anal Archivist is worth giving a second thought. His relationship with the Argentinian bombshell lasted about 6 months, and then I started getting e-mails from him about how stupid he was to break up with me, and how I was the best thing that had ever happened to him, and how much he cared about me.

Too little, WAAAAAY too late. Of COURSE I was the best thing that ever happened to him! That ever WILL happen to him! Why is it that men always seem to realize that after I’m gone???

Anyway, maybe I should have had my shit together when I was 40, because then I’d have adopted an Ethiopian baby girl, and she’d be 6 now, and we’d be celebrating Christmas together. Or maybe I should have given Match.com just one more month.

Or, maybe my sister Julie shouldn’t have died of colon cancer at 57. You see, whenever I’ve been alone or lonely during all of my excellent adventures, I always knew Julie was somewhere out there. I could always pick up the phone and hear her voice. I knew I always had a home in her heart.

Geez, the pathos train just jumped the tracks!! I gotta get over myself, already. So I’m spending Christmas alone in Gulu, Uganda. Honestly, I’m grateful to be here, because if I were in DC, inundated by memories of holidays with Julie and Ron, assaulted by all the trappings of Christmas in America, I’d probably be on a bridge somewhere deciding whether to belly flop or nose-dive.

So I’m guessing The Archangel Julie arranged for me to be here now. Hell, most people in Gulu are so danged poor, they couldn’t make a big deal out of Christmas if they wanted to. I’m not seeing any ornaments or Christmas lights, or plastic reindeer….there’s nothing here to remind me of Christmas.

Except this big-assed hole in my heart. (Again with the whining!) Something tells me I need to spend some focused, concentrated time trying to get that sucker filled. In other words, getting laid is the Number One resolution on my 2008 list. But not with just anybody.....finding the man I want to spend the rest of my life with has now vaulted to the top of my Life To Do List. (It just replaced adopting a baby, because some kid next door has been yelling its fucking head off for the past two hours, and I’m as close to committing Capital Murder as I’ve ever been in my life. )
So I’ll end this brief posting by hoping that all of you reading blog this have a very Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Joyous Kwanzaa, or whatever your Holiday bag is. If nothing else, I hope you aren’t covered with mosquito bites and watching Columbo videos with Dutch sub-titles.