Middle-aged Lesbian Born Late Emerges Enthusiastically to Oblivious World
By Isaman Cann
Saturday, I had a very expensive lunch, just in case the woman who wasn’t right for me could be won by generosity. Rationally, I did not want her. Irrationally, I did. This woman was not for me for about six different reasons. And I knew that, except she was willing to speak to me. And we were both lesbians. Like she knew I was a lesbian, and I knew she was a lesbian. And how often does that happen in the old country I might have come from? Then add in that we were both single and both wanting not to be single. These facts were so loud, and so lovely, I couldn’t think of anything else. The fact that I would be miserable in her life and she in mine, that we wanted different things and had different values—well it seemed in the moment that these were small things one might be able to overlook on account of no relationship being perfect.
I have walked for years to find my people. I have spent so much time away from them, either unknown to myself or not recognizing them as mine, that my own people, well, sometimes they feel like strangers. Like I will never belong to the lesbian sisterhood. Like I will be a perpetual outsider in the place that took so long to come home to. Like I assumed I looked and sounded like the people around me. And now, with the people actually like me, I don’t know how to be. Or even how to talk, can you learn to speak lesbian? Like on Duolingo or something?
I want to scream frustration. I work hard. At life. I have my head on my shoulders enough for myself and multiple other people. Everywhere, all the time, I run around being competent. Except here. Where I ache in waves that roll in like the tide most nights. This one thing. This thing I want so badly, eludes me.
Friends insist I am a fine catch. Professionals weigh in with similar assessments. And it doesn’t mean a thing. If another well-meaning person suggests I stretch myself and take a risk, I will end the day in a car with sirens and flashing lights. Later I will explain at the police station (preferably to a woman in uniform, navy if possible) how condescending it feels for all the helpful people to suggest that perhaps I’m just not trying hard enough. Or that I’m trying too hard. Or. … The list of opposite pieces of advice extends indefinitely.
Meanwhile I keep walking. Introducing myself to numbers of people with limited potential for connection, in hopes of finding something more. I was not bitter until yesterday. Maybe the day before. I’m tired of my own stupidity. My own naivete. Of feeling like I was recently dropped off in the night from another planet.
But since, in a story too long for now, I kind of was, maybe a little self-compassion is in order. I am thinking of the loneliness and longing. Opening myself to how it might change and to how it might not.
But, I am thinking also of our collective condition and how much it hurts to be human. Maybe I’m wondering because doing so forces the retreat of despair. Yet also it feels more true, to hold this tension between myself as an individual and all of us together on this single ship. In this light, my tortured self doubt and fears don’t drown me, they just lap against the boat.
Don’t ask me how—I don’t know. Not with band music marching in the background, but quietly. This opening of myself, to an awareness of our common difficulties amidst my singular ones, allows a small line of melody to sing. Which isn’t nothing.
About the Author
Isaman Cann is the pen name of one of the world’s tens of thousands of Michelle Jones’s. Isaman currently walks and writes in the beautiful province of Quebec, Canada, where she tragically speaks very little French. She writes in between a job and family that she loves, while trying madly to sidestep the hideous demons of non-essential duties masquerading as crisis. Isaman is nearing completion of a book of lyric essays and is seeking representation.
