About to take the dog out for our daily walk. Danced with wild abandon last night and today I feel...fine. Hard to get up from my cushion after meditating but hey, still moving.
I told my friend Ryan last night that I'd totally date him if I were much younger and straight. He laughed, thanked me and we danced together on the floor, rolling around. There was one guy last night who wore very tight black shorts and a shirt. Last night he took off his shirt (um, eww) and wriggled in front of the mirror for an hour. I was chastising myself for being so judgmental but really I was having the age old argument with myself that women don't do that in public but men can. Harumph.
Feeling lonely lately. I so cherish my solitude and quiet. Often I don't listen to music unless I'm playing the piano. Just incidental sounds from airplanes, the washing machine, occasional barks from the dog.
But.
Loneliness creeps in and I feel a well of sadness that lives in my psyche. I've been investigating it and finding the same dichotomy: needing significant time alone and wanting companionship. Friends are great. My various communities are nurturing. The Dharma reminds me that we're never really alone...but there is it. Loneliness washes over me. I so relate to other elders who populate the hot tub at my local pool, their need to talk, to relate, to be touched by the hot water. Indeed, it's a regular social whirl over there. Folks come just to sit in the tub. They don't even get in the pool.
So I sit with my lonely self. I don't usually descend into self pity. I continue to dive underneath the feelings to see what's there. And from there I can find comfort for those feelings, that abandoned child, girl, and woman who finally has the luxury of time. I say that because I think I spent years trying to get here, with working, raising children, having intimate relationships. I was always reaching for....myself. Now here I am.
As a line in a book I am reading right now has said, "Who am I?'
Who indeed.
4 comments:
Maybe we are reclaiming our time, as a young friend stated she was doing. Who knows? Thank you for being present.
The flowering trees are especially welcome this year, aren't they?
"Who am I?" We really never completely know, do we? And of course as soon as we think we do, we change and evolve and dance through another chapter and verse of our lives.
The luxury of time. It is a double edged notion. I am sorry you feel lonely and yet I loved this post. I know this inner state of being so well. You are teaching me so much with your reflections here.
My baby is leaving home for college at the end of the summer, so it will be just Sophie and me. True, I have a partner, my Carl, but Sophie and I will be alone and it will be very, very quiet. I'm slightly terrified because of what it means overall -- that my sons are gone. True, Sophie will never be gone -- at least like that -- but I do wonder who I am and what I'm going to be or whether i am just am.
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