It’s the tail end of summer. The evening felt warm last night but the world felt cold.
I was walking the anxiety away. The pressure on my chest from the passage of time and the news of my mother’s illness weighed on me like a boulder.
So I whipped out what I always do in times likes these…
Pema Chödrön. One of my favorite Buddhist teachers.
I put on my headphones and listened to her calm, soothing voice remind me of impermanence. Remind me to just sit with the discomfort. “Humans don’t just feel good” she said. “Breathe into the discontent.”
I started to again reflect on attachment. How I must accept that nothing is forever. Life is not forever. I can’t hang on too tightly. Not to my youth, not my belongings, not my titles, not the people I love. I must learn to be with what is while it is and to let it go when it is time to let go.
ROAR!
I get it…I hear it. I know it. But it doesn’t make it any easier.
So let me sit with all of it. The part of me that knows better and the part of me that wants to squirm, complain, and throw a little tantrum.
—
On other news…
Lately everything reminds me of you.
There’s a canyon sized hollow without you here.
Sigh.
I am longing to soften.
To rest deeply in my body in powerful surrender. To fill my lungs with sweet, juicy air in full trust that it is all working in divine order. We are not late, we are not early, we are exactly where we should be.
Can I trust?
Can I really, really trust this time?
I am wanting to take the wild leap.
I am starting to think we live in a simulation. Or something sort of similar to it. Life’s too weird, too magnificent, too damn trippy not to lift a brow in suspicion that perhaps something’s up.
Too many strange coincidences leave my radar on alert.
I think I am ready.
I don’t know for what. But I am ready!
You could be laying next to someone and still feel lonely. Disconnected. Unloved.
Which I think points to the fact that loneliness and being alone are different.
You could be alone and not feel lonely.
I think I’m being pointed back to the same lesson.
But its taken some time for it to fully sink in.
Sometimes we ignore our hunches.
We know intuitively that something/someone isn’t quite right for us. But we keep trying to make it work. Trying to put a square peg in a round hole. Trying to fit the slipper in the wrong foot. Hoping that maybe just a little more time, just a little more investment will do the trick.
We leave disappointed every time. Tired from unreciprocated efforts.
Eventually someone else comes around and reminds you of how you should be treated. You KNOW the difference. You observe the difference.
They call. They ask about your day. They remember the details. They go beyond.
And then you think to yourself “Oh! Right! That’s exactly how it should feel like!”
And then the sick part of you goes “Why doesn’t s/he do what this person’s doing?”
And if we don’t get out of this mindset fast we start going into the dark hole of “Why aren’t I good enough?” Or “What can I do to win this person?”
Fuck that.
You don’t have to win anybody.
Don’t go on living to try to be enough for someone.
And don’t wait for someone who isn’t all there to make up their mind about you.
Be with someone who is 100% all in.
Who won’t make you feel like you have to convince them that you’re good enough.
Know your worth. Know that you deserve someone who loves you like you love them.
But even then that doesn’t mean you’re permanently free from feeling lonely.
Sometimes loneliness hits even when you have all of that love you crave. Or even when you’re surrounded by people.
But I’ll talk more about that next time.
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