Not So Much Now
My childhood play was solitary;
Riding my bike across from my house in Nay Aug Park, pretending I was a Royal Canadian Mountie on my trusted horse, off to rescue the beautiful damsel in distress—
In our attic alone eating singles slices of Swiss cheese while drinking a small Dixie cup of milk, visiting Heidi and Grandfather in Switzerland—
Writing stories at night alone in my bed, creating handsome “heroes” who always saved the day for a lovely woman, heroes with whom I strongly identified—
The geography of fantasy and imagination were mine alone to inhabit.
They served me then. Shy, tentative, in love with Audrey Hepburn, wrapped in the never-ending shame of my stutter, being alone in a made-up world served me.
I needed no interruption in my bubble of imagination.
I needed to be alone.
Perhaps it saved my life?
I also learned to process alone. When there was something to do, to figure out, to create, I worked it out—figured it out—got it straight inside my head, by myself—and then took it outside of me, to others.
I became a super-savant at solitary processing.
I’ll figure it out.
I’ll work it out.
Then I’ll let you know.
It served me then.
It doesn’t serve me so well today.
The cost of being a Lone Wolf today?
I deprive myself of the interactions, of the input of others as I deprive them of relationship with me, of insight into me, of intimacy with me.
It keeps me alone, no matter who is sitting next to me.
These days, these longer, brighter, early glory days of spring, I realize how being Forever Alone (capital letters intended), did not teach me how to be alone.
To the contrary.
It taught me how to continue to run.
Not just from you.
But especially and fully—from me.
Please know—this is good news.
This is good, good news.
I feel:
Hopeful,
Connected,
In love anew with the possibility of myself.
By not making my little frightened girl wrong,
By honoring her journey,
By loving her as fully, as best I can, one moment at a time,
By holding her close as I lean away, toward my grounding,
Toward my adulthood,
Toward my rootedness,
I feel alive
As perhaps never before.
- To the children in us.
- To the adults that we are.
- To the compassion that binds us!
Dear Friends, spring is revealing herself more and more. What are you noticing outside yourself? What are you noticing inside? Does this blog speak to you? How? Please let me know. All voices welcomed, all experiences sacred. I am aruni@rnetworx.com.
All blessings!
Aruni