There are so many things that I’ve picked up over the years that I wish had come to me years earlier. It would have saved me so much heartache, but at the same time, if I hadn’t gone through my experiences, I wouldn’t now be able to voice them unaccompanied. It is my hope that you’ll identify with this piece, and add your own pieces at the end. What do people need to know to get through life?
I wish someone had told me “not to surrender my loneliness so quickly” as I read by Hafiz as I turned 34. What a concept this would have been to me as a young person! So many people surrender their loneliness by always being in relationships, living alone but refusing to spend time at home, etc. Alone isn’t comfortable unless you make it so. Make space to be alone with your thoughts, not because it is easy but because it is hard. I hear President Kennedy’s booming voice in my head when I think it because it is so motivational. Of course the things that are most precious are also the things most hard-won. The pain of childbirth without medication is so horrendous (from what I’ve heard) that it’s got to be the main reason there are second children.
When you first start learning to be alone, it might feel like demons are slowly trying to eat their way out of your head… and by demons, I mean the things in your life that you regret. Every mistake, every malapropism, every time you’ve ever missed a social cue… it’s all there. Being alone is not about sitting with your demons, it’s about releasing them. Time by yourself is so unique, so precious, that you are squandering Mary Oliver’s “one wild and precious life” not to try it.
Remind yourself that you’ve been friends with yourself for as long as you’ve known you. You’ve built up more trust in your inner monologue than you have with anyone else. You should see what your running monologue has to say, and “talk back at it.” Everyone has those old tapes of horrible memories that run in their heads ad nauseum. Has it ever occurred to you that you can hit pause and examine what those videos are saying to you? Do you ever wonder if there’s anything that plays in your head that has nothing to do with your current reality? That if you stopped the tape and argued with it, you could, in a sense, put toothpaste back in a tube? If it helps you, get clinical. Think of yourself as the healer and your inner monologue as the patient. That way, you can look at your experiences without “flooding out.” I don’t know if this is really a thing, because I don’t have any letters behind my name, but I use it to mean emotions so overwhelming that you feel you have to run away from them… and then, you do. You become afraid of ever going to that dark place again. Dividing yourself in half and seeing yourself from the outside is the first step into the deep. Feel it out. If you can sustain looking at your memories long enough to watch them and pick one, you are well on your way to your first argument with yourself.
Fighting with yourself needs to be handled as lovingly as fighting with your partner. Just like fighting with your partner is a natural part of life, so is fighting with yourself. There are so many memories that happened while you were alone. Only you can solve that mystery. The miracle is that it doesn’t have to all be done at once. The important part is to keep trying to understand yourself, because if you don’t, you won’t understand anyone else, either.
Understanding yourself is a great way to walk in the world. It’s less difficult for other people to hurt you because you have an understanding of your lines in the movie. You know your motivations, and when you think about how people interact with you, you might start to see their motivations as well.
Because I’m a Texan, I’m sure there’s a fancier way to say all of this, but I won’t. All I’ll say is that knowing yourself is the best and most reliable bullshit detector you can possibly imagine.
Stories That Are All True 