So much time to myself lately. Got an unexpected day off today because one of the girls is sick so their mom stayed home. I did have some fun at the hospice office this morning as I helped get a couple of mailings out. That was great. But now I'm just... alone.
All the stuff with Shannon last week really highlighted my... singleness. I've spent so much time in relationships that weren't healthy, and left so many that might have been great had I been less afraid to let someone love me. All of my choices have led me here, which is great in so many ways... but they've led me here alone.
It's not a complaint. It's a statement... and a condition I wish to change. I'm making a decision to no longer be alone.
Lessons.
I'm learning again and again that my life is an accumulation of my choices and that I have the power to create whatever sort of life I desire. How many times does life try to teach us that lesson? An infinite number of times, I think, yet is seems to be one of the more difficult lesson to truly learn. I know now. Every choice I make ripples out around me... and around others, too, as I fully learned last week... and shapes my experience. I chose to end up here alone. I choose to change that.
Living.
But before I open up my heart to someone else, I'm going to fully open my heart to myself. As lonely as I feel, there is still a pull to go out into the wilderness and be absolutely alone with me, with God, with God in me. I want to live that life, even if only for a short while, to stand in the desert with a mirror and very little else... and not come back until I am truly ready for someone else.
That pull is so strong, has always been this huge part of me that I've only danced around now and again. Why wait? I thought the Peace Corps and Botswana would give me that opportunity, but I didn't fully create it. I got scared and made choices that led me to Selibe-Phikwe and home again in short order. I created that. I know it. I accept and love it. But it's time to create something else.
I'm going to take at least three weeks next summer and survive somewhere in the canyon lands of southern Utah. That's it. I have this amazing opportunity with my current job/living situation to take my summer and run with it... run into me. A minimum of three weeks... just feels right... but with the understand that I may not come back. That isn't a threat or a fear... it's the realization that my soul has always pulled me toward the desert and survival... and perhaps it will decide to keep me there.
I just know it's time to live... and that I need to live with me before I can love with someone else.
Love.
I also need to get back to the things I truly love... Rumi, for example. I found myself quoting Rumi twice today and was reminded how much I long for connection with my own spirituality. I spend far too much time in my own head on things that simply don't matter. Spinning. That's what my friend Brian calls it. I start spinning on money, stupid shit on Facebook, old worries... and fail to reconnect with God and spirit, to ground myself the earth, to shine my light outward.
When I quoted Rumi this morning at hospice, a switch turned. I heard myself talking. That might sounds weird, but... how often do you truly hear yourself? So much of what we say is automatic, a trained monkey sort of response/reaction. So much of it is scripted from old stories we told ourselves, stories which, as I learned so well last week, may have no basis in reality whatsoever. But I was speaking from my heart, from my strength... and I could listen to myself as well as listen to the other people in the room. And I opened. I can't explain it, really... I just opened. I could feel a door to my soul open wider... Love was inside.
"I may sound strange, but it's my strange... and it's true for me... so I'll sing it out loud."
It was like... I lost my self-consciousness for a moment... because I let go of fear... because, for an instant, I just let go.
Letting Go.
I'm going to get a tattoo on my wrist in the next few weeks that simply says "let go." It means so much... is the culmination of SO many of my experiences and lessons. Let go. Just let go. I can't love someone else until I truly let go of Tom... and all the stories I've told myself about him, me, relationships, etc. I can't love ME until I let go of all the stories I've told myself about me. I can't BE Love until I let go of everything... attachments, ideas, duality... Fear.
I've got to just let go... and let God, God within me...
My ramblings for the day. Amen.
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