My high school Spanish teacher was a middle aged version of Napoleon Dynamite, except vertically challenged. He had a pot belly and a ridiculous comb-over. His glasses were tinted relics from the seventies, and he drove a shit brown Dodge Aries. His social skills were no better than the hoodlums he taught. Nervous, and incapable of small talk, he was ostracized by students and faculty alike. Poor fellow never escaped the adolescent hazing that personifies high school.

What I remember best about him, was the way he used to tell our class how he spent his weekends with his “Spanish friends”. Among the students, the phrase, “Spanish friends” served as a euphemism for “other outcasts”. He strategically placed this tidbit into his lectures to prove he participated in social order. He wanted us to know he had people and a life beyond the classroom. What he lacked in physical experience, he made up for in transient emotional connections. Were these connections less tangible than the physical connections we made as peers in high school? Not for him. They were real, but to the hormone infested masses they served as a translucent ether. Something inconceivable, because we had not experienced the connection as he had.

Later, I realized the most enjoyable aspects of his life were invisible to the rest of us. Much of his life was lived in abstract. He bragged about his abstract life to remind himself there was something to look forward to. The man was no loser. He simply spent most of his time displaced from the world he was most comfortable in.

Little did I know, my life would mimic his in ways. I’m not a short middle aged white man who is stylishly impaired (if you question my sister-in law she might have a different opinion), but portions of my life are lived in the abstract. Sure, there are obvious things such as my passion for art. I’m drawn to compositions which elicit a response from my heart and my head though I may not be able to identify a subject.

My social structure is largely abstract. I have a few close friends, plenty of acquaintances, and a mental history of people I know about, but don’t actually know. My closest friends are consumed by jobs, children, spouses or lovers. In a sea of introverts chauffeuring kids to soccer practice, we all tend to rely on each other to take on the task of keeping in touch. The friendships don’t die or wilt away, but make us nostalgic for free time.

The hope for a place that feels like home is in the abstract. I share a nice house with my husband, which should be enough to call it home, but this city doesn’t cry out to me. It doesn’t move me or stimulate me. Home has become an elusive quest, making it abstract. I will make the best of the situation for now

Living in the abstract, often designate me as a recipient of pity. My life isn’t less fulfilling than other’s, but people have a tendency to question and condemn the validity of things they don’t understand. Living abstractly may be grasping at straws, but I’ll take it in lieu of having a life, and not living.