My psych-studying roommate tells me fantasies are a perfectly healthy coping mechanism that all humans use. Often times when we lose someone that we love, we create elaborate fantasies to deal with our grief. She says we need these fantasies until we are able to face the reality that they are never coming back.

My last relationship lasted for three years and it not only involved a man, but his daughter, too. My delusion comes in the form of a particular autumn night that we spent together in an idyllic suburban neighborhood back on the east coast. The three of us were having a nighttime walk and I can still smell burning wood from the chimneys of the homes as we walked past them. We played our favorite made-up game,”Train”, one of us calling out “chugga-chugga” and the others returning with “choo-choo” probably far louder than the neighbors appreciated. We played hide-and-seek. She was so tiny back then that when he would chase us, I could scoop her up in my arms and run for blocks, her giggling little clouds of breath into the night air. When we got home, he made us popcorn and hot cocoa.

It’s been two years since we broke up, but we have lingered in relationship purgatory because neither of us has moved on yet. I’ve been on a few dates and met a few interesting guys, but I can’t stop protecting my delusion that one day the things that were broken will be fixed and we will be a family again. I literally don’t know what to do anymore to get past it. I moved 3,000 miles away. I witness time after time that the broken things won’t get fixed. I think about what it could be like to be with a real person, someone who I could depend on and who could love me completely, and I know someone could do it better than him. In fact, he knows that someone could do it better than him and he’s told me as much. But still it is there in the recesses of my brain- the burning wood and the high-pitched giggle.

In the movie, as Lars accepts that he cannot have the delusion and the real girl too, Bianca becomes ill and dies. If there is any truth to the sweet little proverb of Lars, when I meet my Margo I will let go of my Bianca. But I can’t escape the fear that these things don’t quite work themselves out like the movies and that if I can’t find a way to let go of the delusion, I will never be able to let in something real.

This year I am spending Christmas alone while I dogsit for a family I know. I think vacationing alone, which is more or less what this is, could be really incredible, except that I spend all of my life out here in LA alone, so it’s not exactly a break. There is no one in my new western life that is easy to be around. There is no one here that I don’t have to be careful with, no one that I trust. Therefore, I have managed to master that oh so fine art of feeling completely alone in a room full of people.

Paradoxically, I feel completely connected to life and the world here. I feel like I belong in California in a way that I have never felt before. I am exactly where I am supposed to be. I think that is another reason I have a hard time saying that I am lonely, because in this whole other very fulfilling sense, I am not. This place is my home. I just live by myself in it right now.

Which leads me to this conclusion: this is my time to be alone. This is the season for loneliness. I say season because I know this will pass, just as all of the other seasons in my life thus far have passed, too. This is the Christmas I spend alone.

There is value in being alone. Some people are petrified of it, but I simultaneously indulge in it like it’s a luxury and lament in it like a memorial to what was and what could have been. And both feelings are that extreme. I love to be alone. I love the freedom I have to do whatever I like, or do nothing at all. I love spending time thinking and discovering myself, even, sometimes especially, when it is difficult. I love the strength I feel in knowing that I can be alone and I relish my independence. But I am sad, too, like I lost everyone I ever loved, which in a way, I did when I left home.

I am alone because I ran from my old life. I needed a do-over. I just wanted a place to be new. Of course, I understand now that I am not new here. In fact, I am a cliche here. I am a love-weary single afraid to let people in because they will inevitably leave her. I am the lame protagonist in most romantic comedies only, instead of my ex-boyfriend hijacking my sperm donation so that we could eventually end up together through a series of hi-jinks or my best friend dying and leaving her child in the joint custody of me and her husband’s devastatingly handsome yet boorish best friend who eventually falls in love with me through a series of hi-jinks, I probably just need therapy to figure out how to open my heart again.

I know that I will likely be more happy once I begin to let people in, yet my immediate reaction to it is defensive. The idea of others coming into this free life that I have built for myself and imposing their needs and views makes me feel like someone is giving my heart an Indian burn. But it’s mine! I made it! I love it! I only want to share it if you promise not to take anything I love and turn it into a memory with you that I will find myself lamenting Christmases from now in some new city thousands of miles away (though I bet Christmases in Rome are nice).

There will be a time to find that balance, because of what everyone says about friendship and falling in love and because I do somewhere deep down believe that other people have stuff to bring to the table that I need, but not this Christmas. This Christmas is all mine. This Christmas I am alone. This Christmas I am lonely. Blech. There, I said it.

“I always resent comedians who don’t bring the bag,” Marc’s guest, Mike Birbiglia, responds and they continue down a conversational path about the necessity for honesty in comedy.

Then came the goddamn Enneagram test.  I took it and I was an 8: The Challenger.  Which is all fine and good because I’m brave and unstoppable and all around a hero, except guess who else is a Type 8: Saddam Hussein.  and Castro.  and basically all dictators.  To break it down even further, I came face to face with this:

• Basic Fear: Of being harmed or controlled by others
• Basic Desire: To protect themselves (to be in control of their own life
  and destiny)

To me, this was an oh shit moment, like having the fun-house mirror image of myself shattered and coming face to face with my actual reflection.  No, I’m not Saddam Hussein, but there is a lot of stuff in my life that I have not been honest about, even with myself, in order to control my own image and to protect my gooey insides.

The unguarded moments of my life are slipping away.  The older I get and the more I get hurt, the more walls I feel going up.   I joked with my sister the other day that I am becoming an armadillo, and though I love to joke about what hurts the most, the truth is it breaks my heart that I am losing the things I love about myself underneath layers of armor.  Not only do I not bring my sad bag of shit to the stage of life, I’ve tied the drawstring, wrapped it in padlocked chains, put it in a safe and buried that safe in the back yard, which also happens to be home to a couple of vicious Rottweilers.

It’s exhausting and I can see how it prevents me from making any real connections with other people.  I know what Birbiglia is saying.  I resent the facade on other people and frankly, I find it fucking boring.  I don’t have time for people that can’t be real with me.  Yet I am so unapproachable that most people can’t be real with me.  I have layer after layer of cynicism, apathy, and arrogance that protect me from the vulnerability that comes with having a relationship.

To me, bringing the bag represents a lot of things.  It means admitting my weaknesses. It means accepting my mistakes and flaws and acknowledging my pain and fear.  It means not protecting the emotional people in my life from my emotions, because they’re big kids and they can handle me being human, too.  It means being the same person with all people all the time, damn the fear of rejection and damn the politics.

What would it be like to take it all down and operate from a place of honesty instead of fear?

This is me digging up my bag and bringing it with me to find out.