Why, after everything that I’ve been through and experienced, am I sadder, more closed off, lonelier, more angry and afraid than I have ever been? I have a great job, lots of money (but I spend more than I have), lots of people who love me (but I am far from them), a friend/partner/roommate who cares for me (but not in the way that I want). I have the key to health (but won’t turn it). I don’t understand how this happened. The shock of Jerry, maybe. Which was just a bigger shock, but the same, that I experienced in my marriage, in my first relationship. Maybe I’m not meant for relationship. Why did I choose a life where all I want is to be loved. To be in love. And have gone through a series of failed relationships and now find myself unable to love and be loved. I can’t feel love from anyone anymore. But, no, I do still love, sometimes… when I see that baby who gets hearing aids and hears his mother’s voice for the first time and it makes me feel such a swell of bittersweet pain and joy that my throat closes, or when I see my niece and nephew on a tiny screen, them dancing in their living room halfway across the world and they are so happy and my sister is such a good mother, and I remember that that kind of sweetness exists and I love them for that. Or, when I am behind him, walking through the isle in the grocery store, and for a second I can see him. Without my filters, without the words from our last fight ringing through my head. And the enormity of my love for him hits me in the stomach, and I excuse myself to the bathroom to cry. Or when he plays the guitar in the morning, and he loses his mask and for a second I lose mine and I see him again, and I love and want him with an indescribable ache. And then I wonder if he ever looks at me that way, when I’m not looking, and then I tell myself that he doesn’t, and huddle down into my nest of anger and indignation and woundedness.
I don’t know how to get myself out of this. I come up with plans, and never follow through. I dig down deep and know the truth and when wake up the next day I forgot everything. I watch spiritual movies and listen to kirtan and pray and meditate (sort of… I at least listen to guided meditations), and make resolutions and then fall into apathy, anger, stress. I hold onto that fact that I no longer drink, as my only achievement. I don’t know how to relate to people anymore, and spend my days alone, with my roommate/partner/friend, but alone. I take myself away. I have no breath. No light. No spark. I lost it when I met Jerry and let him take everything that I had built up with my own literal blood sweat and tears. I lost my yurt, my health, my yoga practice, my sobriety, and my confidence in myself. I lost it, but that makes it sound like it happened to me. In truth, I gave it up. I traded it for someone who seemed interested. I traded it for the promise of maybe because I had been so lonely, and then I looked past all of the glaring scary red flags, and then became a victim of it all. Curled up on the edge of bed for months so that my back ached and I never could unwind my body. I don’t know how it happened. I don’t know exactly what happened. But it broke me.
I have theories… was I supposed to be that broken down so that, like after someone is through with bootcamp, I am to rise up a stronger, unbreakable version of myself? If so, I’m apparently still in bootcamp, cause I ain’t risen up yet. Or maybe I’ve just never been loved right, and it isn’t my fault (but that feels like a cop out and victimy). Or maybe I’m going through a series of experiences for an as of yet unknown reason. The Uni and me picked a path long ago and I’m supposed to surrender to it somehow and I’m not supposed to be happy or feel loved or be healthy and vibrant and then something will happen and it will all click into place and make sense. Or maybe I’m supposed to at some moment realize in a blaze of LIGHT that I am as broken as I agree to be, and then rise up in a dramatic Rocky moment and take back my life and health and love and passion and vibrancy. Or maybe none of it means anything and, just, here I am….
I don’t have the energy or clarity to come up with another plan. I want to plan to be awesome. To do something awesome. To be a person worthy of falling in love with. Someone attractive to someone else. I want someone to be in love with and I want someone to be in love with me. I feel like I am so closed down and show the world such a small sliver of myself that that will not happen until I open the aperture as wide as it can go. I don’t even know what it would feel like to be authentic. And I don’t know how to get there. I don’t know what my dreams mean anymore. (Last night I dreamt of a flying polar bear and a white wolf who trotted by, staring at me with fierce intent.) I don’t experience miracles anymore. Or I can’t see them. Somehow in the middle of this winter I do have in me an indescribable Spring. Maybe I have found, again, that core, that iron, that place nothing can touch. Maybe I am set to rise again, again, again, like a Phoenix, again. Maybe I’m so tired that I can’t muster the energy, but maybe it’s coming.
Maybe I need to listen to Aubrey, a guide who visited with me briefly 3 years ago, and told me angrily to QUIT WAITING. YOU DON’T HAVE A SOULMATE! And I asked, sad and scared, quietly, Really? Is that true? And she said, with a small bit of compassion, but still mostly anger, It doesn’t matter. Live like you don’t.
The thought of that literally hurts my heart. It gives me chest pain. It breaks me and makes me sick to my stomach. Maybe I just need to turn and face it, and listen to Aubrey. Just rip it off like a bandaid and wake up tomorrow free of feeling the ache and desire and need and want and fear and lack of attention and touch and love. Gone. Not my life. Not this lifetime. Really integrate that. Swallow it. Let it cleanse my body like a poison until there’s nothing left inside that looks like woman who wants to be in love. Yeah, that’s my next plan.
Nineteen In Sixteen 