I am not going to search for my own meaning and significance in someone else's words. Or someone else's heart. Because really, how many times have I done that, and then wound up with someone else's (well-meaning, perfectly lovely) version of me to live up to? A version that, however nice, just didn't fit me perfectly. A version I began to resent the other person for creating because I couldn't live up to it. A version I hated myself for because I couldn't live up to it.
All problems I could have avoided had I just turned inward instead. Had I just sat through the pain, and felt it.
So now I am.
I am going to sit with my pain. My grief. My demons. I will not ignore them anymore. I will not ask another to fight them for me.
I will not shy away from the solitude. From the loneliness. In my sweet, Christian bubble world, being without a partner, a soul mate, a husband, meant that God was still preparing me, still molding me, still teaching me some unknown lesson I needed before I could move on to the next stage of life. The loneliness, then, was a sign of my failure in faith. (Because if I could just learn the lessons I was supposed to, then God would reveal my husband to me.) Besides, I was taught that I should never let myself feel lonely because God was always there for me. If the whole world walked out on me, at least God was there.
If I felt lonely then, it was simply because I was rejecting God's comfort.
Yet, this idea just doesn't agree with me anymore. As a thirty-two year old divorcee living alone in a big city, my idea of God has evolved quite a bit over the years. As a result, I find myself questioning all of the pillars of faith I used to cling to so intensely growing up.
And years of heartache and relationship failures have brought me here. To this place.
Another heartbreak. Looking back, I see my own behaviors repeating themselves. My own twisted expectations and selfish desires have come back to haunt me, and (surprise!) resulted in another loss. Another person hurt.
And I am alone again.
Except this time, I won't push against the loneliness. I am sitting with it, each day, each hour, each achingly cold, painful minute. I am letting it wash over me. Like standing at the shore in January, openly and purposefully letting the icy salt water spill over my exposed skin. Not running away, but completely feeling the shock of it. Breathing through the intensity. Closing my eyes and experiencing every piercing needle.
Because maybe if I can face it, and face all the ugliness inside myself, then maybe I can figure out a way to love myself anyway.
I think it's the only way I'll ever learn to be whole.
"When we draw a line down the center of a page, we know who we are if we’re on the right side and who we are if we’re on the left side. But we don’t know who we are when we don’t put ourselves on either side. Then we just don’t know what to do. We just don’t know. We have no reference point, no hand to hold. At that point we can either freak out or settle in. Contentment is a synonym for loneliness, cool loneliness, settling down with cool loneliness. We give up believing that being able to escape our loneliness is going to bring any lasting happiness or joy or sense of well-being or courage or strength. Usually we have to give up this belief about a billion times, again and again making friends with our jumpiness and dread, doing the same old thing a billion times with awareness. Then without our even noticing, something begins to shift. We can just be lonely with no alternatives, content to be right here with the mood and texture of what’s happening." -Pema Chodron
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