Right on the heels of my most recent Kerouac-inspired post where I go on about needing adequate alone time from my "mad" friends, comes this note to clearly demonstrate my contradictory nature.
Solitude has been in full abundance this weekend. Other than a coffee date with a couple of fellow yogini's and the occasional cyber-type conversation, I have been on my own at home or alone in the company of unknown people in a public setting.
Even as introverted as I am or as tired as I get from too-frequent interaction with others, I did not go gently into this solitude-filled Saturday and Sunday. It has not been a time of quiet reflection and ease. Instead, it has felt more like a storm to be weathered.
The storm arrived like a deep hollowness right through my solar plexus. Remember playing with Plasticine as a kid and you'd flatten a chunk of it and use a circular object to remove a circle from the center? At times, I felt as if I could hear the crisp winter wind whistling through that hole that went right through me. And breathing deeply, all the way down to the hole, animated the hollow feeling and brought to life with the tears of every unexpressed moment of abandonment I'd ever experienced. I was all at once a frightened child that I would be crushed by the silence, the concrete aloneness and seeming lack of connection to anyone or anything.
How can it be that solitude can both comfort and terrify me so?
The trigger for this weekend's expression of sorrow is not a mystery. On top of realizing that an unexpected, intimate relationship I had hoped would deepen instead needs to come to a noble end, this is the first holiday season that I have not had at least one of my son's living at home with me. As I went through boxes of holiday decorations, I felt suddenly very exposed. I wanted to get back into bed, have a drink, eat something, have sex with someone or do anything but feel what I was feeling. The boxes of Christmas baubles from years gone by stared up at me as if to say "Do you really want to put all this stuff up if you're the only one who's going to see it? Really, what's the point?" I answered those questions with more tears.
But, since tears are not fatal and are meant to be shed, I tried to free as many of them as I could. Solitude isn't fatal either. Along with all the salty, used-up tissues I threw out, I also discarded my need to have a single life that is Facebook-worthy. No warm status updates about trimming trees and baking shortbread cookies. Sometimes the line between being lonely and being alone gets a little blurred. That is life that is too naked for mass consumption.
But fear not, it's not all tissue and tears here! There is a well of gratitude here, too. I got to flex my creative muscles in adding a few decorative touches to my home. I get to spend Christmas morning with my boys who will then travel to visit their father. Then I will enjoy a full day and night of festivities with my five siblings, my mother and grandmother and our families. Finally, I can balance that activity with time on my own.
I don't think I want the gratitude to cover up the hole in my chest though. They both have a message for me that is being held deeply in my body. And if I listen closely and not be afraid to feel the hard feelings, maybe I can unwrap the gift of true presence this season.
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