isolation.

Maggie was alone. Alone by choice.
She decided that a 3 day isolation from the world might be what she needed. But with no money to spare - it would just have to be just her, hiding at home. Kids at their father's....no answering the phone, minimal 'facebook', etc. She vowed she would speak to no-one and not step into her car for 3 whole days.
And, as Maggie turned over her reasons for doing this, she made herself laugh. She had always been good at that. Laughing at herself.
"It's funny", she thought, "I'm doing this because I'm lonely. I'm surrounded by people - almost all the time - but I'm lonely."
The loneliness she was feeling was turned on by recent events. That's how she thought of it sometimes - as 'turned on'. Or 'turned off'.
When she made the decision to shut everything down and off for 3 days - she had told herself it was for a completely different reason. She had told herself that she was tired. And she was.
She was tired of thinking. She was tired of fighting. She was tired of being taken for granted, not being appreciated. She was MOSTLY tired of dealing with her family.Not her children. They were great for the most part. She always felt lucky to have them. But her mother, her father, her sister - even her brother. None of them were really THERE for her when she needed them. And she needed so little. So very little. Mostly, it seemed to her, she gave. She listened to their fears and concerns, she gave them love, support, money, time, birthdays, trips, dinners - was best friends with her brother's girlfriends, one after another. They had all needed her many, many times in significant ways. And she didn't resent it - she loved being the one they could call if they needed a place to live for a few months, or some money for this or that, or a dinner party for a script reading with possible producers attending.....until now. And now - she couldn't even say clearly that she felt resentment. It felt more like betrayal.
"Maybe everything in my world feels like a classic play", she thought.Regardless of why, the word that came into her mind over and over again was BETRAYAL.

As Maggie filled her house with the smell of cookies baking - for no other reason than she wanted that smell - for no-one else but herself, as she flipped through channels of bad TV, as she ignored the phone calls coming in and made herself a cocktail, she mulled the facts over in her head, and tried to assess her own feelings and motives.
1. Her sister was NOT calling her back. This hurt her feelings. She had invested a great deal of money into her sister's shop this last year, with no expectation of getting any of it back, and recently loaned her a bit of money as well, AND been there through the closing of said shop - all the hurt and disappointment that went with it - had been entirely supportive, and now - not even a return phone call. For weeks.
2. She had begun to doubt the loyalty of even the very few REAL friends she had in this two-bit, show-biz town. They all seemed to have a motive.She was so TIRED of people disappointing her on such grand scales when she felt like she was giving so much. This was a difficult time for her. The stakes were high. Life stakes, money stakes....and where were her FRIENDS? Did she even have any? They would certainly return in a couple of months when she had plenty of money to throw around. THAT was encouraging.
3. Her own father wanted her to BUY him a house. Yes. SHE was expected to buy HIM a house. The very same father that never paid for school when she was growing up, the very same father that borrowed money from her when she was a KID and never paid it back, the very same father who - after all WAS the only father she had ever had, and had - after all - introduced her to poetry, literature, opera, classical music, great theatre, and almost everything else she held dear in this life...it was so confusing. Maggie was NOT wealthy by any description. Far from it. The last couple of years, especially, had been a struggle for her.
Her modest DREAM was to be able to pay the bills every month without stressing out about it, or begging for more time. And now this MAN who was - in theory- supposed to sort of take care of her - needed Maggie to buy him a house.It was exhausting.
4. Maggie was in love.
That was the worst thing of all. And no one to talk to about it. In love with a married man who she could not have, or be with or even speak to with any regularity. She was head over heels in love with someone she had known since she was practically a child. Someone who knew her. Knew her darkest secrets and her worst fears.Someone who knew the best of her as well. Understood her resilience, and her deep capacity for love. Knew her humor, and understood it as she understood his.
There was no question of DOING anything about it. He was "happily" married, and that must be respected. She wanted him to be happy more than anything she could possibly want for herself.
The worst thing about this revelation was that it felt like a huge and undeniable spotlight - shining on her heart and her dreams. She could no longer operate under the misguided belief that there was some satisfactory compromise relationship waiting out there in the world for her that would, you know - be alright. How could she expect to settle for the mundane, the ordinary, the less than turn- your- whole world- upside- down kind of love when that spotlight had re-entered her world to show her exactly what she had been missing for so many years.
Maggie tossed around on her sofa, clicking the remote with little to no satisfaction. 'Pretty Woman' - one of her all time most hated movies - was on. Not much else. The hooker with the heart of gold - the hooker that was not really a hooker rang a LOT of bells for her. Lately she could categorize herself as 'the other woman' more than ever before in her life. She had somehow become the ex-girlfriend that men called or e-mailed or wrote to when their own wives or girlfriends stopped having sex with them. This seemed BEYOND ironic to Maggie at her age.Clearly it wasn't just sex that they wanted. Some of the men that sought her out lived too far away for that to be ANY kind of possibility. But they wanted something. They wanted to feel ....what DID they want? And why was it HER? What did she have or know that was all of a sudden so in demand? And why was the net result of all this attention that she felt so alone?
As Maggie regarded 'Pretty Woman' with growing disgust, her mind rattled around on the subject of loneliness.
Her screen writer tenant and somewhat friend had written a film about loneliness. He embodied the subject, was an expert on it as far as she could tell, and therefore his script was one of the saddest things she'd ever read. Quietly brilliant. Speaking to the hoards of people in this place and time who have forgotten how to connect with other humans.
He lived downstairs. By himself. None of them (in their circle) could remember when the last time he had a girlfriend or even a date was. Maggie joked with him about it freely. She laughingly threatened to charge him more money because her adorable and clever 16 year old played with him once in awhile.
People need human contact, that's for sure. They need to be touched. They need sex. This is the reality of our human/animal nature. But what about love? Do we not need love as well?
What is the point of a life lived without it? What is the point of a life lived without love? That was the question that would not let her brain, or heart, or body rest. She was tired, but could not sleep. She was hungry but could not taste. She was starving for the love that was dangling in front of her just out of reach....
and what is there to do? What is there to do about it? She had no answers, and she had no hope.