menu for a melancholic evening

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Sage and Rosemary Roasted Potatoes

Buttered Steamed Fresh Green Beans

Fried Egg

Fresh Tomato Salad

Earl Grey Tea and Honey

"melancholy." mel-uhn-kol-ee noun, plural -chol-ies, adjective

-noun
1. a gloomy state of mind, esp. when habitual or prolonged; depression.
2. sober thoughtfulness; pensiveness.
3.
Archaic.
a. the condition of having too much black bile, considered in ancient and medieval medicine to cause gloominess and depression.
b. black bile.

–adjective
4. affected with, characterized by, or showing melancholy; mournful; depressed: a melancholy mood.
5. causing melancholy or sadness; saddening: a melancholy occasion.
6. soberly thoughtful; pensive.

--Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.0.1). Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

Some days are just like that, melancholy. No, if I'm honest, I would have to admit that the day itself was just itself, a day: sunny, fairly warm, an occasional pleasant-enough breeze. So that would mean that I am the melancholy one today. Why?

Maybe there is no reason and then there are many.

One of them might be lack of sleep. Chronic pain in my right neck and shoulder again kept me awake most of the night. Not being able to sleep, I gave up and read for a while, light, silly stuff guaranteed to distract me. Then, of course, I slept in very late.

Another thought that made me very melancholy today was that I felt so lonely. Is it a rational thought? Probably not. I could have called on at least half-a-dozen friends who would have been able to cheer me up.

I hesitate to be so brutally honest here, as if talking about one of the temporary moods I am experiencing at this moment, might doom me to being perceived as being in a perpetual melancholy mood. Another reason that I hesitate is because it's difficult to talk about intimate needs that usually are discussed only obliquely and covered with a lot of hilarity in my social circles. Only a couple of my friends, I would say, are completely comfortable with such discussions, and unfortunately, they were not available for a heart-to-heart today. Oh, and another reason that pops into my mind for my hesitation is the dismissal of a mood (a woman's mood only, mind!) with the insulting: "it's hormonal" or "are you pms-ing?" or "it's just menopause" (GRRRRRRRR!@#%$##@*&^!)

Oh, there are a couple of my darling good friends who would 'stand in', as it were, if I were made that way :) . Ah me, but I'm not. No matter how easily I can see and understand others enjoying a sex-buddy, I cannot do it.

That is also part of my melancholy, the longing at times for a real life-partner, someone to love, someone to love me, someone with whom to share my life. And here I almost feel compelled to jump in with all the courageous statements that are also true: that I am happy as I am, that I enjoy being independent and it's so easy to live without having to consider another person, etc., etc. But it's not going to work if I deny that I do long for that special male companion.

You be perfectly you, let me be perfectly me: uniquely and mutually
flawed. And together we can discover what it is to be human, and what
two humans might be capable of being together.
~~Joy Houghton