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Lonely
It dawned on me just now, as I contemplated logging in to Facebook to see what’s new in my stream with all the people near and far, real and virtual who have come to populate much of my online life, that I was doing so in order to keep from feeling. Specifically, to keep from feeling lonely. The thought — I am lonely — blindsided me. I am lonely? Really? In this house with my soulmate, the man who now calls me his beloved, his twin flame? How can I be lonely? I am, and I am afraid. My bed calls to me, yards of white fluffiness, pillowy billowy down-filled…
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Soulmate
He is cringing already at the title, I just know it, but it is far too late — the word has been said, not once but many times and not just in jest but in the deeper truth that lies beneath the fear. Soulmate. Not only have I never used this term with anyone in my long and not-so-illustrious relationship history, but I use it now with such certainty, such abandon, such restfulness that I can safely breathe past the wild pounding of my heart that tells me I am walking in uncharted territory. Soulmate. Not only am I his soulmate but he is mine. (Does that go without saying?…
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Partner
Once there was a girl who learned not to trust. She was hurt by things — big scary dogs, loud people, being left in strange places that didn’t smell like home, people who tricked and lied — and learned to go deep inside. She thought that deep within, she could stay safe. The girl built walls and thought they would protect her, thick tall strong walls. What she built instead was an entire world that wasn’t safe. An uncertain world lay beyond her walls. Staying small and deeply hidden, she forgot about her magical powers caught outside the walls she built. The girl felt so alone. She believed she would…
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Spectrum
I’ve been teetering between two ends of what sometimes seems like a vast spectrum. Black and white. Good and bad. I try to squeeze my dualistic world into at least the gentler version, yin and yang, but it evades me. When at one end of the spectrum all I feel is the lack of the other. Pain. Emptiness. Heart-hurt. The way through this, I know, is twofold. One, I can believe in the concept of annica. Impermanence. What I hold in my hand today, in my heart, is fleeting. It will pass. The spectrum expands with me inside it, and I melt into one end from the other. Two, I…
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Pathway
There is a way through. In the dark times, all I can see are the walls that close in around me, the fears that fill me with dread, the gross inadequacies of my wounded heart and soul. In those times it is sometimes all I can do to take a breath, and another. Anything beyond breath is simply too heavy, too hard. I have been offered a path. A hand. A heart, tender and afraid as my own. And I am encouraged that this pathway may be the one that forever keeps the walls from closing in so tightly. This pathway, the one that is being created and crafted and…
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Adrift
My feet are still floating free, unmoored. The horizon shifts every time I gaze into the waning sun. All I can do is look inside and try to breathe, every breath catching in my exploding heart. Soon I am pieces, shattered remnants, adrift on the current. Exposed. Ungathered. Withering. Or, floating, my feet tangle in miles of kelp, deep green Medusa hair ensnaring my ankles, drawing me down. A long stream of bubbles surfaces, each one merging with the wind, rising into gray clouds drawn closely down, adrift. Or, my breath floats around me, encircling me, motionless. Last night’s dinner sits on the stove top, encrusted, unwanted. Laundry waits in…
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Blind
I am watching my life pass before me from behind an opaque screen, my eyes straining in vain to see something they cannot. Once in a great while, once a year or so, I sleep the sleep of the dead. A whole day when I can do nothing but sleep. Oh, I try to make it through wakefulness when this happens, but after an hour or two awake — even after coffee — all I can do is collapse again, gratefully, on my bed. Comatose. And I begin dreaming. No, not dreaming, exactly. More like falling into a world that I cannot escape. In this state I find myself dreaming…
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Loving
I think I am beginning to feel what love is. You would think, wouldn’t you, that after spending as many years on the planet as I have, I would have already known what love really felt like, but no. Not being loved like this. Not loving like this. Oh, I had an idea about love. Many ideas. An ideal. A dream. A destiny. And I loved, as best I could. With my whole heart, the part that was open. I really did. I loved and was loved to the best of my ability at the time. I also knew a lot about what love is not. My heart stretched across…
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Feeling
After a lifetime of feeling but not knowing (or wanting to know) what I was feeling, I am learning to do a check-in. This is what I am feeling right now: Sad. I feel the loss of something I really really wanted. Angry. I had expectations. Made choices based on them. Was I imagining things? Fooling myself? Did I believe in something that wasn’t there? Afraid. Now what? I don’t know anymore. I thought I did. Today I want to try to find my foundation again, but I don’t yet know where to look.
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Missing
I am a ghost. I am formless, void, hollow. I breathe and the breath wafts through me. I sing and hear only the wheezing of a empty dry bellows. I trace footsteps out of my bedroom, following the shapes on the golden brown wood that lead through the hall, past the tiny-white-tiled bathroom, down the steps and out the door into constant motion, cars going by at all hours, energy moving, people living and dreaming within a hair’s-breadth of me, and all I feel is slow, dull, invisible. I move, think, work, and speak in slow motion, half-time, endless loops circling around and around, tightening around me, constricting. I do…