Way of Being

There is really no where to go to hide from your emotions and experience in a town this small. We have no stop light or stop sign, and you can't go to the grocery store without seeing a person you work with or the yoga instructor or the local forest ranger or the guy who installed your cable, etc. Just yesterday I was having lunch with a friend, and up walks Herb, one of my fellas from the gym. There are about 4 men in their 60s-80s who are at the gym every morning when I go get a run in because it's too cold to run outdoors. (If you go at just the right time, you have to dodge a herd of elk on your way to the gym and then get to enjoy the most stunning sunrise over the mountains as you leave the gym). My fellas from the gym are the same four men that occupy a table at our local diner each and every morning for coffee and gossip. Herb said he hadn't seen me at the gym in a while but that he met one of my co-workers. He inquires about how many girls are currently enrolled at our school, and I explain that I hadn't been to the gym in a few days because I slipped on ice and badly bruised my shin and knee. It's always refreshing when I see people I know in the community. It's exciting because sometimes it's the only human contact I have in a day or the only human contact I have outside of therapy sessions and therapy groups. I feel revived even from a brief encounter. I feel reconnected to the human race. I feel less alone in this wilderness.

At least once a week (sometimes more), I miss having roommates and dread going home to a house with only a four pound dog occupying it (though I am intensely grateful for Sophie's company). So on my mind, lately, has been loneliness and how different it can be at any given time in life. Several of my friends have moved to cities with millions of people existing within the invisible city limits, and they have also reported a sense of loneliness. They walk out their door and traffic zooms by the hundreds of people on the street, rushing about to brunch with their book club or to Whole Foods for a lecture on organic wheatgrass. They do this without interacting with the people who share those same experiences. They function as millions of strangers following a lonely path without acknowledging that the people walking along side them seek human connection too. Then there is the friend who just transitioned into her very own apartment in the same city where all our friends reside. She too feels lonely, now in a house without the constant energy of roommates and pets. In writing a letter to my sister, I reflected upon a particularly lonely time in my life. I wasn't physically lonely. I had friends and family nearby. The loneliness I felt then was much different than what I feel now. It was a deeper loneliness, one that human contact couldn't cure. The kind of loneliness that comes when you are struggling alone because no one understands your suffering, or at least you don't think they'll understand. I found myself with a pot of french press coffee (Montana Coffee Traders, of course), writing that letter in the one seat at my table where the sunlight stretched her arms, feeling so grateful that my current loneliness was of a different breed. I no longer feel misunderstood or neglected. I simply miss laughter, and pots banging in the kitchen in the early morning, and the smell of garlic and onions sautéing on the stove when I arrive home from work, and the sound of a roommate on the phone with a friend as she pulls weeds in the garden, and the sound of the gentle strumming of a guitar coming from the "fainting couch" in the living room.

I am relieved, I realize, that all I suffer from is having so many beautiful memories that I long to maintain connections and friendships. I am relieved that the cure for my current ache is in simply reaching out to the amazing people who are in my life, here in this small town and back in Austin (and southeast Texas and many other places across the country). Though I live alone, I am not on this journey by myself. I am excited to develop more friendships and enjoy more laughter and silly jokes. I look forward to bonfires and hiking and cheese-making, all with lovely people in a vast and beautiful spot on this magnificent earth.

And in the times when I feel alone and particularly lonely, I am learning to look inward. I'll admit, it's not always an easy choice, especially when there are mindless movies and sitcoms available for streaming and with the potential to help me forget that I am actually an active participant in my own life. The way I see it, the task at hand is for me to find a way of being that is congruent with who I am at my core... whether I live alone or with many, whether I seek solitude or connections. I aim to find peace in my existence. I aspire to relish in the sounds of my own creations (and the sounds of Sophie's exuberant personality). I will set an intention on this very day to use this time in my life to practice being intensely present and focused on just being. Being without need or want. Of course, I've set this intention before in my life and have been unable to maintain this way of being for a sustained period of time. As a result, I will go about this in a different manner than before. I will go about living this intention with radical acceptance. I will no longer compare myself to others, and I will no longer judge myself when I'm too distracted to come back to the present moment. I will simply acknowledge and accept my experience and feelings and learn from that information.

--------------
Gratitudes:
Longer days
Sunshine
Shared journals
Sophie
Mountains
Insects (and that their sound represents either that spring is approaching or that they are confused)
Fresh milk
Music
French press coffee
Sisters
Friends