There are times when it’s painstaking for me to be alone. Excruciating. Frightening. It feels like punishment and the stories I create breed resentment and hopelessness. What’s maybe worse is feeling alone or lonely when I am not. Someone who knows me closely is probably rolling their eyes or opening a shocked gaping mouth as they read this because they know of my supports and connections on the regular. After all, I’ve been in a loving relationship with my wife for a decade and have a host of friends and people who believe in me. I even met some of my maternal family recently and had a damn good time, so I should just stop it already, right? Anyway, my wife is one of many healthy mainstays in my life (grateful for our cultivation) and yet I still sometimes cling to the lack I feel elsewhere. And it’s so easy for me to go there; to the lonely place.

Being alone comes as no shock when I recount my 37 years. There are multiple moments or periods to posit that I was groomed for aloneness. I came into this world solo, the youngest of 6, and was the only child raised by my Mom with significant age gaps between me and most of my siblings. My Dad had no other kids (still waiting to meet a rando sibling from his island or Canada because men and their dicks), loved his bottle and freedom from raising me while my Mom was caught up in her trauma and rotating abusive relationships to really be present with and for me. She was fucking dope, but this is about how she wasn’t, so bear with me and hold the halo. I’ll allegedly write books on that. For now, I write checks to my psychotherapist, cashing the rest as apologies to people I hurt when I don’t manage my anger appropriately as both the adult I am and the one I was forced to be at a young age. The molestation I endured and domestic violence I witnessed made sure to end my childhood. Got bitterness, fatigue? But take today. I looked at a friend’s IG of her kid starting college with the traditional family caravan in tow, all happily piled into the dorm as a sendoff. I grew sad as I remembered having to take the bus to college alone, terrified and unsure, because my Mom didn’t have the means or wherewithal at that time to make a way. Insta-fucking-gram triggered that. Ugh! Also, as I’ve written in my earliest posts, my Mom passed when I was 22, so yeah, I know about being alone.

Despite knowing aloneness well, I struggle with it and it makes me hate myself. I know who and what I am, mostly. I’m amazing! Why’d I want to keep company with anyone else more than with myself? After all, my best words and ideas stem from this solitude and singular physicality and my creativity morphs into more beauty. But it’s not just being alone. It’s knowing I have to be. Because then I’d have to get square with the pain aforementioned. That’s it. I’m terrified of my story; the one I co-created long before and/or just existed in, and the one I continue to write that’s awfully despondent right now. The story no one else can write, nor should. This fear assumes the form of an unloved, unseen other. In this space, I’m not confident, powerful or effective. I run from myself often and get stopped in my tracks by my misery and mystery. Funny shit is that I also isolate. I can get so consumed in others and my work that I wind up requiring way more solo time to repair. But in my fuckery, that seems like a normal path to consequence. It’s when I crave community and don’t wanna ask for it, or only get fractions of a whole that I feel abandoned or exiled. Oh, so much wasted energy y’all!

So as I write I’m clear that I gotta reorganize the narrative and dig deep. My wellness, my vitality and purpose depends on it. Growing up unprotected and unseen where it mattered has taken me too long to heal and more healing is mos def needed. At my core, in my still place, I know I can heal myself. I have before. I even have some damn tools to get started. If my close people are still reading this then they are also taking all these examples and reworking them into the resilient fighter stories they know so well. Given this cocoon called “life” that I’m in, I’ll be best served to remember that I possess the power to craft my journey. And recreate it. I’m struggling with my higher self and it’s ok, we all do it. So no pity please. Pray for a sista though. Lately I’ve been called to my oneness with the universe. My spirit gently accepts the peace in that certainty as I close out. Writing moves me ahead per usual. Thank Goddess! I confided in a loved one that I am a seed splitting. I’m no farmer, but the distance between seeds seems requisite for their growth and transformation. Guess I’ll heed nature yet again.