The Unrepeatable Moment
Updated: Jul 13
I woke far too early, even by my standards. I have always loved mornings and rarely resent an early start, but this was different. My mind was awake before the day itself. It had been barely a week since the summer solstice. By now, the birds usually began their tentative conversations around 4:30, and the eastern sky carried the first suggestion of light. Instead, the room remained dark and perfectly still.
The only sound was the soft rhythm of Naevia's breathing, broken now and then by the sleepy little sighs that only contented cats seem capable of making. She was curled neatly against my chest, her front paws stretched across my arm while I instinctively folded myself around her, a posture that was as comforting for me as it was protective for her.
When it comes to affection, she is convinced there is never enough.
She wants to be held, scratched, carried, or curled against someone nearly every waking minute. Working remotely has only encouraged the habit. I use an oversized chair at my desk with a pillow across my lap that exists for no purpose other than giving her somewhere to sleep while I work. It has become one of the quiet rituals that stitch ordinary days together.
Our evenings have settled into their own ceremony as well.
Every night she follows me to bed, nestles into the crook of my arm, and purrs herself to sleep. Through the night we drift into different arrangements, adjusting to one another without ever really separating. By morning, it feels less as though I am getting out of bed than asking permission to leave it.
Her breathing changed.
A long inhale, then the slow stretch of her front legs, tiny toes spread impossibly wide as she sensed I was awake. Without thinking, I rested my free hand on her back and stroked her fur in slow, deliberate passes, silently reassuring her, and perhaps myself, that it wasn't time to begin the day.
My watch wasn’t on my wrist, I don’t know where it was. My phone, silenced and out of reach on the nightstand. Finding out the time would have meant disturbing her, and the question suddenly seemed unimportant. So I stayed where I was, listening to the deepening rumble of eight pounds of contented cat settling into a full purr.
There was nowhere else I needed to be.
For a few quiet minutes, the world could remain outside the bedroom. There was only the warmth of another living creature who trusted me completely, the steady vibration of her purr against my chest, and the rare satisfaction of allowing the present moment to remain exactly as it was, without asking anything more of it.
I could be spending this precious moment thinking about how she is about 15 and not many years left. Or wondering why am I awake at this time. Should I go ahead and get up or try to fall back asleep? My work load today is going to be a killer, and coming into it half cocked with no sleep is going to be rough. What about that conversation I had with TIGGER (nickname) that just left me a bit off kilter. I thought a connection was developing there, but I obviously had misconceptions about what was going on, is that a fault in me? I have been so isolated, so lonely, and the lack of connection is growing tiresome, is this permanent?
If I think too much about those things, the sadness will start to creep in. Gradually becoming focused on the potential futures and outcomes, and forgetting that in this present moment I have the absolute perfection that is a small purring ball of fluff that wants nothing but to love me.
Be present, for the only real commodity I do have is time. I close my eyes in the darkness and remind myself of this.
“You are not the same as you were before, you were much more… muchier. You’ve lost your muchness”
My former partner once remarked, during a conversation with someone else, that one thing he had always known about me was this: when I care about something, I give it my whole heart. I live with intention.
"It is powerful," he said, "but it leaves very little room for anything else."
I had never thought of myself that way. I was simply living. I didn't know another way to move through the world. It wasn't as though I had read a shelf of self-improvement books or followed some carefully designed philosophy of intentional living. If anything taught me how to pay attention, it was a lifetime spent with animals and in wild places. They ask for presence, not performance.
Years ago, someone told me I was "too much." At the time, I laughed it off. The remark seemed more revealing of the person saying it than of me. But over time it came from people whose opinions carried weight—people I loved, trusted, and built my life around.
Eventually, "too much" became an explanation for betrayals, for distance, for choices that left lasting scars. The message, whether intended or not, was difficult to escape: that simply being myself, fully and honestly, somehow caused pain for the people I cared about most.
So I began negotiating against myself.
I tried to be quieter. Less intense. Less enthusiastic. Less invested. I sanded down the edges that had once felt like the truest parts of me, hoping that if I occupied less space, life would become easier for everyone else.
It didn't.
Nothing became healthier. Nothing became lighter. The only thing that disappeared was my own sense of vitality. I had not only grown distant from the people around me; I had grown distant from myself.
The change felt like walking out of an ancient forest I had known all my life. Towering cedars gave way to clear-cut hillsides, the ground dry and exposed, the air stripped of its coolness and shade. What had once been lush, layered, and alive became a landscape exhausted by overuse, where every step stirred only dust.
In Newborn at 43, I wrote about the collapse of my nervous system. Looking back, I can see that it wasn't only my body shutting down. I had misplaced something essential. I had abandoned my own muchness.
As I slowly rebuilt my life during that season of rest—with Rally beside me through every uncertain step—I found myself returning to the places that had shaped me long before I knew anything about relationships or expectations. Back to forests. Back to quiet mornings. Back to animals. Back to the version of myself that loved without calculation and threw her whole heart into the things that mattered.
I wasn't becoming someone new.
I was recovering someone I had almost convinced myself to leave behind.
Isolation has been breaking me in a bad way….
My romantic life has been, at best, unremarkable over the past few years. I've met interesting people, gone on what must be close to a hundred dates, tried dating casually, and tried dating with intention.
Everyone has advice. Wait until you're completely healed. Get back out there immediately.
Don't date. Date often. I suspect none of them are universally right. We all carry our own timing. The only advice that has ever made much sense to me is to move honestly and try not to leave unnecessary damage in your wake.
Being alone has never frightened me. If anything, I've become too comfortable with it.
The nature of my work keeps me at home most days, and many of the things I love -hiking, camping, wandering forests, riding motorcycles- are solitary pursuits. They fill me in important ways, but they also sharpen my appreciation for genuine human connection.
That has become the thing I miss most.
It isn't that I'm searching for a lifelong partner or trying to force my life toward marriage. I'm looking for something much simpler and, perhaps because of that, much harder to find: moments of real connection. Conversations without agendas. Shared experiences that exist for their own sake. Relationships measured less by where they are headed than by how honestly two people can meet each other in the present.
Lately, though, I've begun to notice another kind of loneliness. It isn't the absence of people. It's the absence of belonging. I find myself caught between two impulses. One pushes me to keep introducing myself to the world, to remain open despite disappointment. The other grows weary of beginning again, of investing hope in conversations that quietly disappear or connections that never quite become real.
Whenever I've tried explaining this feeling, most people politely nod but don't seem to recognize it. The only ones who truly have are other single people who work remotely, people whose lives also unfold behind screens. Ironically, the understanding we share exists almost entirely online.
Those virtual friendships have mattered more than I can say. Some have been remarkable people. But I've also noticed how easily they become another habit. I reach for my phone more often than I care to admit, chasing the possibility that someone has written, that somewhere a conversation is waiting. For a brief moment the loneliness recedes, only to return a little stronger once the screen goes dark again.
It's a strange substitute for presence—comforting enough to keep you coming back, but rarely enough to satisfy what you were actually searching for.
These past few months I have been very aware of my hyper fixation on checking my phone for those dopamine hits, which then turns into mindless scrolling. I have really been trying to embrace more ‘slow brain’ content and limit my usage. It is also part of the reason I decided to start publishing these longer essays.
Shapeshifting for others means death
So I push back against the isolation the only way I know how: by refusing to surrender to it.
At least once a week I pack up my laptop and work from a coffee shop instead of my home office. I go to concerts, gallery walks, lectures, restaurants, community events, and volunteer whenever I can. On paper it sounds like the recipe for a rich social life.
It is.
Until you realize you're doing almost all of it alone.
There comes a point when introducing yourself to strangers begins to feel less like adventure and more like another obligation. At this age, breaking into established circles is surprisingly difficult. I don't have children, so there are entire communities that naturally form without me. Drinking has largely lost its appeal, and while I love living close to forests and mountains, the tradeoff is that nearly everything social requires an hour's drive.
And so, inevitably, there are the dating apps.
People like to pretend they're mysterious, but they're mostly arithmetic. Swipe through hundreds of faces. Match with dozens. Hold conversations with a fraction of them. Meet a handful. Hope one turns into something real.
For a while I actually kept track. How many conversations. How many first dates. How many second dates. How many ghosted. How many canceled. Eventually the numbers became almost absurd. Disappointment settled into routine.
Every so often, though, someone would come along who made me believe there might be something deeper. More than once I discovered I had misunderstood what we were building.
What I interpreted as curiosity about me—the person I am—turned out to be gratitude for something else entirely. I had helped someone become more comfortable with intimacy, or vulnerability, or desire. I don't regret that. If someone leaves with less shame, more confidence, or a kinder relationship with themselves, I'm genuinely happy for them. But there is still a quiet sadness when the conversation eventually turns.
"You were wonderful... but..."
And then comes the explanation.
"But I'm looking for someone who can be a stepmother."
"But I think of you as a friend."
"But I need someone who'll slow down."
"But you're so busy."
"But..."
Those sentences are rarely intended as judgments, yet it's difficult not to hear them that way. They collect over time until they begin to sound like a familiar refrain.
Too independent.
Too active.
Not maternal enough.
Too adventurous.
Not adventurous in quite the right ways.
Too much.
For a long time I tried negotiating with those conclusions. Maybe if I softened this edge. Maybe if I showed them I could also enjoy quiet weekends, wear dresses, nurture the people I love, build a home, stay in instead of going out. Maybe they simply hadn't seen enough of me yet.
The truth is, most connections ended before either of us had the chance to know who the other really was. Lately I've begun wondering if what I've wanted all along has been much simpler than romance.
I want to be seen.
Not as someone's fantasy. Not as an adventure. Not as a therapist, a teacher, a sexual experience, or a placeholder until someone else arrives.
Just... seen.
Seen for the whole of who I am, contradictions included. Someone who can disappear into the woods for a weekend and still love getting dressed up for dinner. Someone who laughs too loudly, cries over injured animals, rides motorcycles through the rain, and builds quiet routines around an eight-pound cat.
It sounds almost childish when I say it out loud, but I think I want to be seen the way my dog sees me.
Without comparison.
Without expectation.
Without wondering whether I should be someone else.
Simply as the person worth running toward every time I walk through the door.
He saw me for a moment, and maybe that’s enough?
The realization that I was, once again, back on the dating scene felt more exhausting than discouraging. It was simply another thing I hadn't wanted to carry. So I returned to the same practice that had been slowly rebuilding me: stay in the present. Spend my time—the most precious thing I possess—collecting moments worth inhabiting completely.
Once I let that settle into my heart, the fog began to lift. I quietly released the hope that there might be something more with Tigger. There was sadness in letting go, but there was relief, too. Not every connection is meant to become a destination. Some simply remind us that we are still capable of hoping.
A few days later I loaded the motorcycle, folded up the kickstand, and pointed it toward the mountains for a week at the off-road rally. I knew what was waiting for me there. Old friends. New faces. Campfires. Long rides through forests. The easy conversations that seem to happen only after a day spent riding dusty trails together. The kind of community that dissolves isolation without ever trying to.
The anticipation alone overwhelmed me. Somewhere along the highway, with my helmet hiding my face, I found myself crying, not from sadness, but from gratitude.
One afternoon I noticed a man standing by himself. He had kind eyes and an unhurried smile, and something about him made me walk over and introduce myself. A gentle soul.
I must have looked like I'd just ridden through half the mountain. My hair was tangled with rain and dust, my riding gear was filthy, and whatever composure I usually tried to maintain had long since disappeared somewhere out on the trail. But, we are at an off-road rally, so I guess it was to be expected.
There was no effort to be less than I was.
No polished version of myself.
No attempt to smooth away my muchness.
He smiled anyway.
His name was Timber (nickname). It was his first rally. On a whim, after buying a motorcycle, he had ridden up from Northern California without quite knowing what to expect.
We kept finding one another throughout the evening, until conversation carried us well beyond sunset. Under the light of a full moon we traded stories, discovering that our lives had crossed in surprising ways without ever meeting. We'd lived in some of the same places. We'd both navigated divorce. We'd both known loneliness. We'd both spent long stretches trying to rebuild lives that no longer resembled the ones we'd imagined.
Our histories felt less like parallel lines than roots growing through the same patch of earth, occasionally touching before disappearing again beneath the surface.
Earlier in the year I had started using the word kismet after another unexpected friendship entered my life. I don't mean destiny in the grand romantic sense. More the quiet improbability of two lives intersecting at exactly the moment they needed to.
Standing there beneath the moon, that was what it felt like. So when we kissed, it didn't feel like chasing a future. It felt like honoring the present.
For two nights we shared a small pocket of borrowed time. We fell asleep beneath the stars with the easy comfort of people who asked very little of one another beyond honesty. There were no promises, no expectations, no carefully imagined future. Only the rare gift of being completely where we were.
Looking back, I don't remember every conversation. I remember how peaceful it felt to stop wondering what came next.
Homefront
I have been thinking about Timber and his travels back home, and the gratitude I have for feeling like I was seen for a moment in time. I hope I was able to give him the same.
Outside, the birds are chirping loudly as it is midday. It has been raining lightly for the past two days. Naevia is on my lap, and her head is neatly tucked into the nook of my arm. Rally, my pup is curled at my feet, while I sit here writing this thinking about the mountains, campfires, strangers, old friends, dusty roads, and all the improbable crossings that make up a life.
I don’t know if I’ll ever see Timber again. Maybe our lives only crossed long enough to remind one another that kindness still exists. That strangers can become familiar for an evening. That intimacy doesn’t always require permanence.
Maybe that was enough.
BOOK: A Field Guide to Getting Lost - Rebecca Solnit This is a series of autobiographical essays that explores relationships, trust, memory, desire, place, self, and all sorts of stuff. All the while blending experiences with things like tortoises, punk rockers, mountains, movies, paintings, wandering. The book can be a bit pretentious, the author thinks rather highly of her experiences, but if you read it in bits and pieces, it can be interesting and sometimes fun.
SONG: Fuck it I'm a Flower - Crying Day Care Choir
The song is stupid catchy. I came across it a month ago when making an instagram reel and it just hit. I love it. It reminds me to just be me. Whatever, I am me.
Thank you for reading my post. This post/essay, like many of the ones I write, is a blend of my personal experiences, travel, memories, stories, and shared conversations. These solely represent myself and my opinions and thoughts. When it involves personal friends I have given them nicknames unless they have given explicit permission to use their given name. There are times that I am able to pull from what I wrote down in my journals at the time an event happened, others I am trying to recall memories that have been altered by brain injuries and a lifetime of simply living. I may not always get it right, so please forgive me for some unintentional variations.
I always welcome feedback and thoughts on my posts. Please feel free to send me an email or comment below.
Love from the road,
Nic & Rally
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