After my Ingrid Michaelson song post, someone commented, "It's just a song people."

I loved the responses to that, but I especially loved this one:

"And a poem is just a poem? And a painting is just pigment on a canvas and (so the song goes) life is just to die? Sorry, I don't buy that. I think it's good, great, wonderful to look to art, music, architecture, nature — all these things — to try to find or understand our connections to one another and to find some meaning to go with our experiences."

I spend more time doing this these days — finding new meanings in pieces I've already known. Songs, especially — whether they're about splitting up, or, more recently, being in a relationship that makes me happy — songs I've known forever I hear again and suddenly understand, suddenly feel like they're connected to me.

Suddenly, there are songs that mean something. Books that suddenly make sense. Poems that make me feel like I know where I'm going.

Because I like that — that feeling of connection — and because I want to irritate the commenter who thinks songs mean nothing but a paycheck to the songwriter, I'd like to spend a little time this week on those connections.

That's the thing about major life shifts: There's new meaning to find, and there are others trying to find the same meanings. Sometimes they say it better than we do.

I've been listening to Ingrid Michaelson all week. One particular CD — it's like she's crawled into my head and is digging about it in, only in a catchy/lovely/song lyrical kind of way. My past two years are there in their entirety, neatly, in 10 tracks or so.

This one song — "Corner of Your Heart" — I can't stop listening to it. I can't stop because it upsets me so much, like a bruise you can't stop pressing. It's beautiful and haunting and infinitely disturbing. I can't turn it off.

"There's a corner of your heart just for me," it goes. "I will pack my bags just to stay in the corner of your heart. Just to sleep underneath your bed. Just to occupy one minute of your day."

Now, I don't know if this intended to be a love song. Maybe it is. Maybe to other people there is romance in it.

But to me, it's horrifying. It's everything that was wrong about my relationship: me just wanting something, something, anything that would tell me I was loved back. It's me being offered only a corner, being willing to take that. Being happy with that. Giving up so much in hopes of that one minute.

I can't stop listening to it because I want to know if that's what it's meant to mean. Because I recognize myself in it. And because I'm so far away from that place now and don't want to go anywhere near it again.

Also, it's a really pretty song.

Lindsay knows exactly what to do when a friend is getting divorced. She doesn't press. She doesn't pester with questions. She doesn't fill the space with reassurances or aspersions - she allows silence. She allows time. She knows that what's needed is normality.

At the same time, she'll let you that, anytime you need, it, you can call her and she'll drive out and spend the day with you, or the afternoon, or the hour. She'll take you to lunch, she'll go to a movie, she'll just sit with you so you're not alone.

When you move to a new place, she's the one that will spend the first night with you so you're not alone, making the weekend into a party instead of a chore, keeping any of it from being sad. She'll unpack boxes. She'll organize your closet and your kitchen.  

She is, in short, an invaluable friend. 

The other reason to look to Lindsay is that she has a marriage that makes me rethink my certainty that relationships can't last. Years in, she and her husband are still in love, still happy, still right for each other. They make room for each other's lives while still sharing them. They compromise. They talk. They are each other's best friends, and they still make out.  

There are people like this in the world. There are relationships like that out there. This is good to remember. 

Counting "divorced" as one of my personal adjectives is a bizarre thing. Like it or not, this is now a huge part of who I am. I don't like this as an identifier, but there's no getting around how much this has shaped me. You don't spend 15 years with someone and lose them without it becoming a part of you. But still — I'm tall. I'm a teacher. I'm divorced. This is a descriptor. This is uncomfortable.

I was about to meet Mike's parents, and realized this was how they know me — I'm someone from college. I'm someone from California. I'm someone who's divorced. Worse, actually, I'm someone who is getting divorced.

I had no idea how to bring this up when I started dating. When do you tell someone? You bring it up too early, it's, "Whoah, hey, that's a lot of information for someone I just met." Too late, "How could you not tell me this earlier?" The problem is, of course, compounded by the fact that the thing isn't final. I tried casually slipping it into conversation: "We used to do so and so — oh that was back when I was married," but was never able to pull it off successfully.

What was nice about Mike was that he has known me since college, so there was no news to break. There was, though, that horrible moment way at the beginning, when he said, "So, when did your divorce become final?" And having to answer, "Well, it's not."

Eventually, this will be so far in the past that it will cease to be a top-three descriptor. Eventually, everything will have been finalized for so long that I won't have thought about it in ages. Eventually, I'll stop worrying about what parents and new friends and colleagues think. This day, honestly, can't come soon enough.

Turns out, when traveling, I'm astonishingly antisocial.

My solitude was premeditated in Wales, as I was determined to learn how to be alone. I figured I'd feel differently in Vienna. It's a city, after all. It doesn't grind to a halt at 5 pm. I wasn't planning on sitting on a hill and contemplating my life; I'd just be a regular tourist.

I did meet a lot of people. Some, I did not take to. Jim from New Jersey and his friend Thomas, a local organ player, for example. They chatted me up at a bar one night, until they asked what I taught. I said, "drama." They thought I said, "German," and there followed a very confusing five minutes, after which they lost all interest.

Also Pepe, from Kosovo, who followed me around the street for a good 10 minutes, grinning widely, before approaching me, telling me his life story, and asking if I would get coffee with him.

But many people were lovely. A group about my age had a brief, friendly conversation with me at a café one night. A couple from Albany shared my pension breakfast table one morning and invited me to join them at the museums that afternoon. I found, though, that I didn't want to join anyone. I liked wandering alone. I liked being quiet. I liked not worrying about pleasing anyone but me.

What I started thinking about on this trip is the difference between a need and a preference. Turns out, I don't need anyone else around, and, quite often, I prefer the solitude.

Now that I know this, I can figure out when it is I prefer to have company. It was okay that I got lonely some nights in Vienna, and I would rather have had someone there, because I know that I don't need someone there.

I spent much of the flight from San Francisco to Vienna analyzing the difference between setting out on this trip and heading to Wales.

Leaving for Wales had a strange feeling to it. I was headed across the world, and there was nothing, really, tying me to home. I felt strangely adrift, without a tether — just this little floating dot. After having been a half of a whole for so long, it was just me. No one was waiting for me to come back. No one needed to know I had landed safely. It wasn't a bad feeling, it was just strange.

I didn't feel that way this time. The floating-in-my-bubble sense was gone completely. Why? Was it because I had already done this, and so knew I could? Or was it because I'm in a relationship, so that tether is back?

I had always chafed at the idea of being back in a relationship. I didn't want the responsibility, the ties, the obligations. I wanted to be free to go where I wanted, to do what I wanted, to not have to answer to anyone.

Surprisingly, that tether wasn't chafing. It didn't feel like an obligation. It wasn't even a strong enough feeling to really register, just an, "Oh, this is different."

Going to Wales was largely an act of defiance. Maybe now I've gotten past that.

I am back from Vienna. It was cold (very cold), beautiful, cobbled, and simultaneously the perfect place to be alone and very, very lonely. I had a fantastic time, most of the time. But, being me, I spent a lot of time trying to work out exactly how I felt each and every minute of the trip, deciding what that meant, deciding where it means I go from here.

The first day was miserable.

The airline lost my bag, gave me a form to fill out, and shrugged. "If it's still in D.C.," the pleasant but unhelpful woman said, "it will be on tomorrow's flight. Then you'll get it sometime after that. But we don't know where it is."

It was 8 a.m. San Francisco time, it was midnight. I was exhausted and without clean underwear. On top of that, it was cold. Really cold. Too-cold-to-be-outside cold. This presents a problem when the point of your trip is to walk around and look at buildings.

Jet lag makes me unhappy and lonely. And I never remember that. I never think, "Wait, you're always kind of miserable your first day anywhere. This passes, and then you're happy. Go get some schnitzel, take a nap, and wait it out." Instead I think, "What am I doing here? Why am I spending money to be unhappy in Europe instead of being comfy at home, on my couch, with my cat and the Internet?" Clearly, before setting out again, I need to tattoo a reminder to myself on my hand or something.

Next post: things perk up. Also: we spend a great deal of time analyzing exactly how we feel. Also: skeletons.

I went to Wales, and I did it by myself. I decided to go, I planned the trip, I bought the ticket, and I did that alone. I didn't get lost. I didn't miss any busses. I did exactly what I had pictured doing.

I had this fantasy of sitting on a hill and being surrounded by green and just thinking — and halfway through the week I looked around and realized I where I was and what I was doing was just what I had seen in my head.

In the process, somehow I got this persona — this kind of girl who picks up and goes somewhere just because she wants to, and doesn't need anyone else with her.

The number of people who are awed by that is astonishing — and I want to say, no, no, you're talking about me. I'm scared to do anything. I never take risks. I do nothing spontaneous. I'm gripped by terrible inertia.

But, it turns out, even if you think this person isn't really you, the fact that you've done it means that it is you. This person — this person in her 30s with a backpack and a pair of boots and no idea if she'll be able to find the right bus, that person who goes a week without a computer or a phone, who spends a week utterly, utterly alone with herself and her own thoughts — that person is me, after all.

This year, I'm going to Vienna. Why? Because it sounds pretty. By myself? Yes. I'm going to go to the opera and listen to Mozart and get lost in the city centre. I can't afford it, I don't speak German, and I don't know a soul there. But I'm going.

I'm going because I can. Because no one can tell me I can't. And because that feeling that I am capable of doing this, because actually being that kind of person for a while. I liked that.

In the course of scolding myself for expecting an epiphany I actually had an epiphany. Why, I was asking myself, do you expect everything to mean something? Can't you just, for once, sit here and just be?

And that was it, of course. I don't know how to just be. I do 48 things at one time, all day, every day. There's always someone around, something to do, somewhere to go. I had never really been alone with myself - and now that I am, I don't know how to do that. This, then, I thought, is why I am here. To learn to be still. Because if I can, I can get through this, because I'll know I can be content just alone, just quiet, just me.

(By the way, Josh Groban is excellent epiphany music. If you're due for one, please, plug him in. "Verita" was playing at this particular moment. It was like being in a film.)

So this is what I did the rest of this trip. I found places to sit and I sat there. I listened to Josh. I looked at the view. And I figured out how to be quiet. How to have my own company be enough. Each time I felt like I had managed that, each time I sat in a place and just was, without worrying or twitching or needing to talk myself down, I'd find a pebble and take it with me. I have a little dish of them on a bookshelf at home, to remind myself that I know how to do this.

That's a little cheesy, I know. It's contrived and sentimental. But I eat that kind of thing up, and knowing that little dish is there does help, now that I am back without a hill on which to sit.

I reached Abergavenny without getting lost, which pleased me.

If you're looking to be alone, there is no better place to go than a small Welsh town in March. The town center was completely deserted by 6 pm. I could have strolled naked through the streets and not caused a stir — no one would have seen me.

There's a castle in the middle of this town. (This is one of the many reasons to love Wales — castles are just lying about. Everywhere. You practically trip over them.) I went and sat on an appropriately scenic bench. I will sit here, I thought, with this ginger biscuit and this cigarette and Josh Groban on my iPod and I will be contemplative. I will ponder the metaphor of this trip.

Of course, first I had to figure out what the metaphor was.

There had to be a metaphor. It wasn't enough to just be here because I had decided to be here. I had to find out something about myself. I had made this decision, come all this way, and was here, alone, to make a discovery. I was here, on this bench, to have an epiphany, and this epiphany would show me where to go from here. This trip would mark a turning point in my post-divorce life.

Then, You've got to be kidding me, I thought. You're in Wales. You're sitting in a castle. This isn't enough for you? You have to have something else, too?

And then, in the midst of my mental self-chastisement — I had my epiphany.