How to Decide Which Play You’re Starring In

Advice for a single young person going on a vacation with a family full of couples

Before we get to today’s advice column, I want to clear up something that this letter-writer brought to my attention.

This lovely person had the impression that the advice column was only for paid subscribers, and they were worried that as a free subscriber they wouldn’t get to see my response. They’d held off on sending in a letter even though they’d wanted to for a while.

Now, the reason this person had that impression might have something to do with the fact that I flat-out said so on my About page. An understandable mistake!

What I didn’t know when I said that was that I was wrong. I’m making up Clown Class as I go and we’ve only been here together this way for a few months. I’ve changed my mind and I don’t like that idea any more. Everyone gets the advice column always.

If you’re a free subscriber who has a question for me but you’ve wondered what the point was in writing, now you know. You will get to see the answer.

(Since this newsletter is thematically about struggle—and that’s a heavy theme to sustain without blowing off steam—the perk for paid subscribers from here on out will be a freewheeling party post from time to time where I talk fun nonsense and we don’t think about struggle at all unless it’s minor and charming.)

Onward to our letter!

Dear Tina,

My family is going on our first ever Christmas trip, for an uber-special stay at the El Tovar on the Grand Canyon rim. It's been many years in the works, and the rooms were reserved last November: for my parents, my aunt and uncle, my aging grandfather, my sister and her partner, and me. Many rooms, many $$. I am 25 years old but the baby of the family, balancing awkwardly on the tightrope line between childhood and adulthood. In the fall, I asked my mother if she could reserve a separate room for me because I had started dating someone seriously and hoping to bring him as my plus one. But he and I broke up last month, and now it'll be just me, and it's hard to justify the expense of a whole room for my lonely self.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that, as absurd as it sounds, I only began to date this guy seriously because I was hoping to bring him to Christmas and thus gain some legitimacy in the company of my coupled-off family members. Now I am thrust into the shame of being single, being young, and being unable to justify the request for a solitary room.

A few weeks after the breakup, my mother asked if she could offer up my room, inviting a cousin and her husband who were up until now not part of the Grand Canyon plan. The idea is that I would stay in the room with my mom and dad. That's the kind of thing I'd happily do if we were traveling just the three of us. But in context, somewhat insulted, I put my foot down and said please don't. I felt like her request reinforced the feeling I've had that I only have the right to a room of my own if I am bringing a plus one. 

But last night, feeling like maybe I was being unfair, I told her she could do what she wanted with the room. Now I am regretting the decision. She hasn't yet asked the cousin, so I want to go back to her and find a way to reiterate how important having the room to my own is, but I'm not sure if it should be. Am I being silly? Why is it such a big deal to me? These rooms are quite expensive, and I can't have it both ways, can I? Being taken on vacation like a kid, but expecting the dignity of personal space like an adult.

I feel caught between, and most of all, caught in the shame of still being single when everyone else in my family is paired off. I'm close with my (widower) grandfather, so he and I will spend good time together, but otherwise I can hardly bear the thought of feeling so alone at Christmas among the happy couples. This is the strife at the heart of my letter. Do you have any advice for me?

Thank you,

Wavering on the Edge

Dear Wavering,

I’m so glad you’ve written in. El Tovar looks spectacular and I love this opportunity for you. With Christmas still a few months away there’s plenty of time to prepare and pull a meaningful, good experience out of the bag when the time comes.

The goal, let me say upfront, is not to feel smooth and excited by the time your departure date rolls around. The goal is to have a game plan for allowing yourself to be a full human being out in the world in company, with kaleidoscopic feelings and a firm (enough) handle on your innate worth.

Being single and surrounded by happy couples is a thing. I’m not going to try and talk that into nonexistence. And you’ve let us in on these hot, loud characters you’re bringing with you, your shame and your loneliness. We all know those guys.

We do need to separate loneliness and shame. Loneliness, however deep it runs, a person can work with. Shame is a goddamn liar and an arsonist.

It’s highly sensational, i.e. full of sensation, to be in a room surrounded by happy couples when you’re lonely. It’s true. But what, if we can drag out a microscope, is the shame of being single? I know it’s there but what is it?

What, really, is it?

It’s innumerable lies all densely knit together. Write them out. See how many individual “statements of fact” you can find your shame telling you on this topic and interrogate the hell out of them.

Shame can hang out, it can bark, it can set fire to your innards a little, but it is not saying anything of worth. You might have to live with the flame-feelings to some degree but you don’t have to listen to a word it’s saying. Dismiss, dismiss, dismiss. Any words that float up in your mind from shame, dismiss. Ruthlessly, constantly. Stomp them.

Another thing, quick, re: the gentleman you began to date seriously in the hopes of having a person to go on this trip with you. Instant total forgiveness for yourself immediately, please. This is exactly the kind of thing humans do. If you were somehow able to get your hands on a printout with all the names of all the humans who are dating someone right this minute because an event is coming up that they don’t want to be single for, that would be a long, endearing printout. You wouldn’t have time to read all the names of these spirit cousins before you had to start packing.

Let’s address the question of the hotel room. I’m of the opinion that, yes, you should speak to your mom and let her know how important having your own personal space is. You aren’t silly. Your own space is important to you. I understand the feeling of balancing on the tightrope line between childhood and adulthood, particularly when it comes to family, but your dignity is as important as anyone’s dignity. Humans of all ages are entitled to be treated with dignity.

If you’re able to have a full, honest, vulnerable conversation with your mom about some of the things you’ve shared with me, and you trust you could do so without any blowback besides the internal blowback from baring your soul, then that’s step one. Have as much of that conversation with her as you can.

There is an unknown (to me) bundle of dynamics at play here, too.

I don’t know what your parents’ means are, nor the means of the potentially-getting-invited cousin and her husband. Would this be a once-in-a-lifetime trip for them or could they pull this type of thing off on their own? I don’t know how close your family is with this cousin + husband, and how the dynamics of the trip might change with their presence. Are they great? Are they not much of a factor either way, delightfulness-wise?

The answers to these questions tip the balance however they do.

I think you should make a stand for the room, either way, so you’ll know you did. You can take an eraser to that potential regret before it has the chance to form. Best case scenario, the conversation goes beautifully and you have a private space to retreat to if and when the vacation gets spiky.

I hope this is the outcome. If it’s not the outcome, don’t worry.

We’re going to put on a play.

You are, you’re going to put on a play. I am but an early consultant.

Whether you end up in a private room or sharing a room with your parents, you don’t have to ride this experience passively and hope for the best. You get to decide in advance what you want this vacation to be about, thematically, as a play that begins when you get there and ends when you leave, and you get to decide how to move through and consider your days in order to hew to this vision for your play.

You could be a minor character in a play about couples. You could decide that the couples are the stars and you’re a humble serf in a walk-on role. This is a play that part of your brain is trying to write already but I don’t think it sounds much fun to perform.

I’m getting glimpses of a beautiful play about a young person and their grandfather. You and he are the stars of your play, to hell with whatever else is happening all around you. The more I read your letter, the more he started to glow. It’s a profound gift to have a grandfather you’re close to who’s still alive. To have a grandfather like that right next to the Grand Canyon with you…hot damn.

Canyon, stars, space, trees, earth. A beloved grandfather. Unbeatable.

How much of this play can you stage out of doors?

If it’s a play about couples, the action of the play seems like it takes place in and around bedrooms. Couples going into bedrooms, couples emerging from bedrooms. The hallway between bedrooms? Dining tables, maybe? I’m not as excited, personally, about those settings. I wouldn’t stage any terribly important action there if I could help it.

I would consider time in bedrooms and in hallways and at dining tables crammed with couples as backstage time, off time, time you don’t have to worry about dramaturgically. You’re on break and you can rest and eat and bring a different quality of attention to the hanging around. A softer, jokier, less keen quality. Nothing happening in those settings with the whole cast present, none of that is what the play is about.

That’s what I’d choose. You get to choose whatever you like.

One decision you can make ahead of time, if you have a loose map or layout of the hotel, is where at El Tovar you’d like the most important scenes to take place. Where’s the most pleasing place you can sit with your grandfather, for example? Is there a big wonderful fireplace in the lobby? Where can you and your grandfather wander out in nature, if he can do that? Is there anyone else coming on the trip whose company you relish? Anyone else you’d like to have a larger role? Where at El Tovar might you be likely to catch them, or where can you invite them for a spell?

You can’t, of course, lock down the amount of time you’re going to be spending with each person, and you can’t lock down where you’re going to most optimally be every moment. What you can do is decide which moments are important and which are not. And you can give a person (or a couple) a larger or smaller role—wherever they happen to be on the property of El Tovar—with the quality of your attention to them.

This isn’t to say that you won’t feel loneliness, or you shouldn’t feel loneliness, or you won’t have feelings about staying in a room with your parents if that’s the outcome, feelings about childhood and adulthood and shame and dignity. You will have these feelings and you’re not doing it wrong if you do. You will, you will, and it’s good. It’ll be perfect.

I love imagining I’m in a play sometimes when I’m having a feeling I wouldn’t enjoy if I weren’t an actor in a play playing a character who’s supposed to have that feeling.

When you’re in a play, you’re trying to arrange yourself so that major feelings can arise organically in you, feelings that match the circumstances of the play. When you’re acting in a play and an appropriate surge of feeling arises at the moment the play calls for it, the watcher in you is delighted.

If you decide in advance that the feelings you know are likely to arise on this trip aren’t shameful, that they’re a real and important part of human life, and that a feeling surge isn’t a mechanical failure on the part of a robotic, happy family trip-taker but a chance to feel keen and alive and plugged into the circumstances at hand, then you’re setting yourself up for success. Life is supposed to have feelings in it, not just composed pictures, even family vacation life. Family vacation life is just life. Life should have proper topography, going way up and way down, and not just flat, walkable surfaces everywhere.

A play in which no one is disturbed…I don’t even know if that’s a play.

What if you cry? What if you feel like crying? What would be a beautiful thing to do with that feeling surge? What if you went to your grandfather and cried with him? What if you asked him to sit outside with you on a bench so you can confide in him and cry and hear what he has to say? What if you two spoke about loneliness? He knows about loneliness.

There’s a situation where it would be beautiful to be the baby of the family, a precious young one to be loved.

Grandfathers, too, by nature of being grandfathers, are likely to be called offstage from the larger play sooner than the other cast members. You’d never regret having no plan but being in his presence and letting him unfold for a few afternoons or evenings, letting him speak on what he needs to speak on, bouncing the ball with him wherever it bounces.

It’ll be interesting to see what the other playwrights are doing, too, your fellow travelers, your castmates, those improvisers, what they’re throwing out there for material. Many balls will be bounced to you. Sometimes you’ll want a ball to get bounced to you and it won’t.

You can initiate any line of action, bounce any kind of ball you want to anyone you want.

All of the couples, too, don’t always have to move as a set, or be considered as a set, and I bet a lot of people in the couples would be delighted to be peeled off from their couple to have interesting scenes with you. You could also remember that nobody is, in their essential being, part of a couple. We’re born alone, we’re in our minds alone, we die alone. You could wear a rubber band around your wrist and snap it to remember that loneliness is for everyone and even people in couples feel it and everyone wants to be seen and known.

There’s a Grand Canyon’s worth of territory inside each person in every couple where nobody else ever goes. You can plumb some of that if you feel curious. Nobody usually asks the questions that lead there but you can. That’s balm for both people’s loneliness. That’s a door somewhere interesting for everyone in the scene.

You can, above all, decide who you’ll be on this vacation, in this play. You can give yourself pleasure by deciding to play a role that interests you and suits you. (“A single person” is not a character description for the ages and I don’t think a ton of people would clamor to audition for it.) You can create the character that you’d like to meet again in your memory by choosing what you’ll open your eyes the widest to see.

I don’t know what your play will be but it’s got all the ingredients to be something memorable, something you’ll love to think back on and rewatch.

Who was that interesting young person wandering around El Tovar? Such an important time. What unfolded?