A Country of One

And the many shades of silence

I recently clicked on one of my older profiles and saw a quote by Don DeLillo (Underworld) that I’d chosen as a motto: “I’ve always been a country of one.”

I was a painfully introverted teenager and young adult. Whenever I recall my young self, it feels as if I was walking about inside my body as if inside a tree trunk, looking out to the world through slits in the bark.

Don’t get me wrong: the trunk was not protection. I felt unfailingly watched by the whole universe, whether I was crossing a street, picking my nose in the privacy of my bedroom, or carrying myself through the school hours and intervals. No, it wasn’t protection; it was separation.

In high school, I longed to be part of the clique. I guess I wanted that camaraderie, that familiarity, that belonging together. I craved that together-fun. My fun was Balzac or Dostoevsky, which made me proud in some ways, but didn’t really bring out that teenager’s laugh. Some other “fun” in that world of my own involved writing and dancing to Queen’s Night at the Opera.

What did I write? I did a lot of journaling. But I also remember stories I wrote about a girl (guess who?) meeting the four Beatles, having a great clique while there’s romance going on with Paul. Later it turned into a great love – with John.

Fantasies.

At university, I stopped caring about cliques. But I was still a country of one. Well, maybe of two, with my best friend and desk mate. There were too many faces that came and went with each different class, so why bother engage? Balzac and Dostoevsky were good enough now. I never knew the gossip and the goings-on. My friend did, and, where necessary, updated me. We were chatting in a circle during a break one day, when I wondered at a girl from a different major who seemed to have a large belly. My best friend cried out in disbelief: “Come on Zoe, don’t tell me you didn’t know! She’s having her baby in a month!”

I did some more writing. A first novel. Putting to paper what I hardly would have been able to articulate to real people. No more fantasies of John or the four knights, but psychological, stream-of-consciousness prose after the models of modernist writers I was enthralled with.

The great change came in my first steady job. I was teaching adults in a language centre and helping provide information to potential customers. I felt good about myself, the environment, my mission. I smiled and talked and laughed. My classes were dynamic. People liked me and learned with me. I was in a flow.

We organised once a teacher training course, and guess what, one of the participants was a former university colleague. She exclaimed during a break: “Oh, Zoe, you’ve changed so much for the better!”

I laughed but wasn’t sure if I was only flattered, or also wondering how “bad” I’d been before.

The adult in me got bolder and bolder, more and more outspoken. Even blunt. Sometimes perhaps too blunt. I don’t think I was very unfair in my bluntness, but maybe often too brusque.

As years went by, I became pretty active on the social media. Not the addictive pastime, but regularly sharing. In my analogue life, my boldness sometimes turned into oversharing. I felt that in a uniform world, full of clichés, sending out a personal tone was refreshing and engaging. I still sought that human connection that in school took the shape of craving to belong to the clique; as an adult woman, I assumed that sharing my self (whether personal thoughts, or a personal way of wording them) would help build those connections.

Writing turned more and more into just projects. I kept lists of ideas of the great novel I’d write. One day. When I had time. Now I was too busy living.

I put myself out there increasingly. Almost shouting: “Please like me!” I no longer wore the trunk over my body; I was far out on the field. Searching, seeking out, probing, poking, sharing, giving away stuff of my mind and heart. As a businesswoman (trainer, coach, often confidante of my one-on-one clients), I had a circle of contacts, but I was still a country of one.

But then came the great landslides in my life, including leaving Romania, starting anew, leaving my professional circles and my few friends behind. Most of the substance of my identity had to be recycled. I came across Eric Berne’s What Do You Say After You Say Hello, and realised some of the phony scripts I had led my life by. Striving to be the good girl, to be liked, to be followed. Or just to be joined.

Soon, I came across meditation by chance, and then started reading more about spirituality, self-reflection, mindfulness. I left a lot of my outspokenness behind. I stopped giving any thought to writing: what was the point of it anyway? Putting things in words? Futility. Words are treacherous and so darn limited. The real experience is inside, beyond conceptualised blabber.

I no longer craved cliques or laughs. What was missing was much deeper: I needed to get a life to belong in. Putting myself out there, searching, turning stones? Nonsense. Social media was now a swiping game during the morning coffee, just to see if I’d been missing something. There was hardly ever anything.

Tiny step by tiny step, stretching over several years, I broke through the tree trunk that must have been discarded underground, and reached the core of my being. There, deep down, I was complete and I didn’t need to turn any stones anymore. I didn’t need to belong in any country, person, or persona. I belonged in my self.

But I didn’t need to dismiss words completely either. Rejecting is after all the reverse of craving. It’s a flag on a minefield saying, “here’s a hot spot”. There was no hot spot anymore in me. So the rejection was gradually dissolved.

I went back to writing. Slowly. Jotting down thoughts in a casual journal. Back to my lists of ideas for the great novel. Back to the novel I’d written with nineteen. Rethought, redesigned, placed in new perspectives.

And, who would have thought? Last year I found that commitment to writing every day. Set up this Substack (yes, it’s been a year!). Turned a story I’d written into a novel manuscript and took it to an editor.

I’ve been posting at least once a week. In the process, shaping up a concept of what I want to write, and defining my why.

Looking back, it seems to me that I’ve walked – or lived – a coherent path. I went from extreme shyness to sharing to oversharing and then to chosen silence. Past that point, I found my way back to sharing, always mindful, though, of the gap of silence that nourishes my self-expression. I am putting myself out there, but I’m no longer turning stones and shouting “Please like me!”

I’m still a country of one, but the borders are open for anyone to step in¹.

The quote from DeLillo, by the way, goes on:

“There’s a certain distance in my makeup, a measured separation (…), I guess, that I’ve worked at times to reduce, or thought of working, or said the hell with it.”

1. What is a country of one, after all? In this universe, we’re all countries of one. On earth, since I discovered a twin soul in my daughter, I can’t really say anymore that I’m a country of one.

And my best friend from university times? She still is. My most loyal reader, week after week (THANK YOU!). Maybe we’re never really countries of one, on this planet.