Hippo, birdie, two ewes...

... to the lovely and talented braider!!! Have a great one!!

We can haz Wolfling!

The chaoswolf arrived last night from her summer in Surrey with her husband; she's here to finish up her final quarter of school. She's enjoying the home-cooked food -- the Y.D. made her fabulous lemon chicken last night -- and her family, and will probably start being lonely and mopey in a day or two if she hasn't already.

River: Loving a loner

I must have been hell to live with, our first few years together. I probably still am. I have it on good authority that I was "a pill, and a hard pill to swallow", but I suspect that's understating the case considerably. I've always been something of a loner.

What distinguishes a loner, I think, is not whether they want to be with other people. I wanted companionship desperately. Too desperately, but I'll get to that later. What distinguishes a loner is how they react to stress: fear, pain, sickness, desperation... Most people, I think, reach out to other people for help. A loner needs to be alone, and either withdraws or lashes out and drives other people away.

The loner doesn't necessarily want to be alone. I spent most of high school and college feeling terribly lonely and depressed. But a loner is, fundamentally, more comfortable with nobody else around. They have their hobbies, their job; their time is their own. They don't have to share their time or their attention.

Having a companion makes them happy when things are going well and things are relaxed, but drives them crazy when they're stressed and feeling time or financial pressure. Having someone dependent on them -- a spouse or a child -- is terrifying.

When most people are stressed or unhappy or sick, they reach out to other people. Their friends, their parents, their spouse. They want to be taken care of and hugged and paid attention to.

When a loner is stressed or unhappy or sick, they just want to crawl into their nice, safe, lonely cave. Maybe they lash out in anger to drive off anyone who gets too close; maybe they run away in terror. Maybe they just curl up into a ball like a porcupine, with their prickly spines on the outside.

 

If I'm a loner, how did I end up married for over three decades, with two kids, two cars, and two mortgages?

Remember I mentioned that desperation drives people away? Want companionship too much, and if you're a loner it makes you less likely to get it.

What a loner thinks they want in a lifetime companion is another loner: somebody as self-sufficient and geeky as they are. It might work; I've never tried it. What I was lucky enough to get -- more accurately, the person I was lucky enough to have find me -- was exactly what I needed and never realized that I needed: somebody gregarious and friendly and outgoing, with a huge network of friends and a talent for organizing big parties. With enough interests in common that we could share a happy weekend event together, and enough persistence to darned-well drag me to SCA tourneys and science fiction conventions until I got used to the idea that I enjoyed them.

But even that isn't the main thing; I'd probably have been equally happy with another loner, if only they'd found me and been tenacious enough to keep me. I'll never know. The important thing about Colleen is that she did find me, she loved me anyway and didn't let me drive her away. She still loves me anyway, and she still doesn't let anything I do drive her away. The ballad of Tam Lin comes to mind.

'They'll turn me in thy arms, lady,
An adder and a snake;
But hold me fast, let me na gae,
To be your warldly mate.

'They'll turn me in your arms, lady,
A grey greyhound to girn;
But hald me fast, let me na gae,
The father o your bairn.

They'll turn me in your arms, lady,
A red het gad o iron;
Then hand me fast, and be na feard,
I'll do to you nae harm.

'They'll turn me in your arms, lady,
A mother-naked man;
Cast your green kirtle owr me,
To keep me frae the rain.

Loving a loner is difficult. They're prickly and cranky and awkward, and most of the time convinced that they'd be happier if only you'd go away and leave them alone. It takes patience, and tenacity, and stubbornness. But deep down they know -- I know, anyway -- that they couldn't possibly have found you. You found them, and recognized something in them that you loved, and kept on loving them even when they didn't think they wanted you to.

Every once in a while Colleen asks, "why do you love me?" My answer is always the same: "Because you love me."