Second Love Note

Love,

I am reading a book called Generosity: An Enhancement by Richard Powers.  It's about a man who has come across a woman with a resilience about her that is addicting.  She's "generous" with her joy and happiness even though her life has been beyond difficult.  I am not very far into the novel.  I am only on page 53 but it is slightly life changing.

I am a melancholy woman.  I have always been melancholy or lachrymose.  My mother tells me that I was a quiet and introverted child.  In this book there is a small paragraph that mentions joy as being cultivated early in childhood development helps promote happiness.  I don't think that my mother failed in cultivating joy in my childhood.  I think I was just unresponsive.  

My introverted personality gets in the way of a lot for me.  I just moved to a new state into a house with three other women and I have been forcing myself to interact.  But it feels forced.  It does not feel like these women are my friends; they are just roommates.  There is a timeline established in their lives together and I have stumbled into it as they are beginning to take flight into their separate lives.  

The connection between this book and my own experience is that I need accept the introverted side of me as part of this transition and that with time things will naturally become enriched instead of jumping into things and forcing myself to open up.  I need to love, generously.  And that includes myself.  I need to show that I love who I am even in my most "I just need to be alone" times.  I think it would be unfair to me to  not allow myself to adjust how I need to adjust.  MM suggests that I should include myself with my roommates in their activities but I am not ready to socialize and go out with three women I barely know and their myriad friends. I want to settle and find my way.  I want to make friends the way that I know how.  I want to establish my own time line.

One day it will all come together.  Until then, I'll love, generously!