You’re struggling. I get it. I’ve been there in so many ways, so many times, you wouldn’t believe it.
The only way out is you.
I’ve been penniless before. I’ve starved three times in my adult life: twice when I was pregnant with each of my kids.
I’m talking:
We daydreamed of what might be in the refrigerator,
we were so poor;
and that’s not even nearly the worst I’ve suffered through.
So, I get it.
But here’s the thing:
Find what you love,
not WHO you love.
Do what you love,
not WHO you love.
That solves everything.
Literally everything.
BE who you love;
That’s really the only step.
There’s just one. That’s it.
Your stories are, unfortunately, just a slow way for you to examine yourself until you can get to THAT TRUTH,
and, until you figure out THAT TRUTH, your stories are unfortunately just excuses.
I’m not dismissing you. I’m trying to help you.
But it is up to you to decide that you are committed to you.
Write.
Every single day.
You can use your computer, if you like.
Just use Notepad.
But write EVERY SINGLE DAY:
Write your stories;
Write them THERE.
Write about your frustrations.
Write about your dreams.
Write until you’re sick of hearing yourself write.
Write until you’re sick of complaining about the same old shit.
Write and write and write and write and write and write.
Something will break in you.
Don’t judge ANYTHING you think or feel.
Write it ALL there.
It’s your sacred place without judgement.
Let no one read it unless you feel like they are someone you feel you could die with:
I mean that very very literally.
Let no one read it unless you TRULY want to share it.
Write like it was going to save your life –
Because it WILL,
if you keep writing.
When you feel like it, go back and read old pages.
Write about your hopes, your dreams, your frustrations.
Write about how sick you are of whatever you’re sick of.
Write about how stupid I am for giving you this damned assignment – if that’s what you feel.
But WRITE
EVERY DAY.
Give yourself a word limit. You can write more, but not less.
You’ll fail.
Do it again.
Keep writing.
THAT is how I saved myself.
Part of it, anyway; but that was significant, huge.
That’s why you have to commit, first. You see?
Your conscious mind will find a way to express to you all of what matters, and the writing will tell your mind that these are the things that matter to you most.
It will focus on solutions for those problems
and it will help you find them;
but if you are dishonest
you are only cheating YOURSELF
and you will find yourself unhappy.
It’s as easy as this:
If you go to McDonald’s and order a Big Mac when you really want an ice cream cone, you can’t blame anyone except yourself for NOT getting the ice cream cone.
Understand?
And if you HATE McDonald’s?
You can’t blame the existence of McDonald’s.
You can only blame yourself for GOING there.
Super-easy, huh?
** With credit and profound thanks to Julie Cameron for her wise advice in The Artist’s Way and to the late Frank Herbert for his immense wisdom in all the books of the DUNE series – all of which has changed my life only because I took it all and made it mine.
I gained a good thirty pounds, I’m sure. They still say I’m sexy, and maybe I am…. Sometimes I feel so, and mostly I just don’t know.
I never thought I’d be so comfortable lounging around in the late English summer, breezes blowing coolly across a grassy lawn and stirring the leaves in the trees so they sound like ocean waves coming ashore, RAF planes flying overhead at indiscriminate intervals.
I didn’t think I’d feel so comfortable after starting to fall out of love, to rest so gently on its precipice. I’ve always thought: If I’m out of love, I’ll be alone. I won’t be me.
But I’m not alone. And I’m still me.
Maybe I’m even more me than ever. I certainly express more of what I think and feel, in the moments of thinking-and-feeling.
And he’s not too bothered, not enough to wish me gone. Perhaps it’s because I still love him…. Perhaps it’s because he loves me.
I’m just, more or less, alone. Exactly the way I like to be.
Falling out of interest with falling in love, but sitting on this precipice, nonetheless. Not in love nor out of it, but just loving.
It’s funny, because it’s what he talked about from the beginning, what he’s been so concerned that I feel, more than anything: That I’m comfortable.
I didn’t want to be comfortable. I resisted fiercely.
I’ve grown so accustomed to being uncomfortable, to being on the verge of falling off a cliff of some sort or other, to facing my fears, to facing my demons, to mirroring others’ demons so they can face them. It’s not always fun, but the coming-out is; and it’s always rewarding. You inhale a great breath as you walk out of Hell and you never know where you’ll end up.
Before, you were often there, or rather, you’d come around again to check in with me, to check in on me.
C: “How are you doing with your injury?”
M: “It hurts, and it’s very swollen. I have to take the pain meds pretty regularly, and I get really tired. But it doesn’t hurt as much as it did.”
C: “…How are you otherwise?”
M: “I’m lonely.”
C: “What about the 50k guys that were swarming you?”
M: “That’s why I’m lonely. Swarms mean there’s no connection and the real people can’t get through.”
C: “I understand. I am kind of a needy male, too.”
C. & M. text conversation
I told him when I met him that I’d lose you, if I fell in love with him, if I ever wound up with him. Was it Fate or some strange connection between us, some strange agreement made long ago in an unspoken language? Whatever the case, the timing was as queerly precise as ever. And, boy, did you seem angry.
But I guess I’ve walked out of Hell again; and, instead of you (or anyone, really, except for him), I’ve ended up on a very cozy, quiet farm in the east of England where the birds chatter all day and for most of the night, where the farmer is flirtatious and kind, where the horses nibble grass all day long, and the foxes cry at night like complaining factory machines. The doves, however, drive me crazy with their plaintive coos that sound, to me, like a sleeping baby with a bronchial infection.
And I am alone all day long; kept watch over all night long.
I thought I was coming to Europe to run – actually, to sail – away from my problems and into myself. Greece was gorgeous, but it didn’t work the way I had planned. I was sad that I had nowhere to go next, that my plans were dashed. And you made it clear that I was not to come visit you, expressed in no uncertain terms; and I couldn’t alternately arrange to visit my friend in Italy.
So, I returned to England.
Sex with the Englishman I’m with is grand, but it is not enough. But I knew that with you.
Nor is it an escape. I knew that with you, as well, but I never knew it so well as I know now.
Supplant “sex” for “travel,” “TV,” “books,” “writing,” or “work” and the truth clings intensely in all cases:
Not a single one is ever enough, in itself. Not a single, solitary activity can ever be a viable escape.
You want to know what our problem was? I’ve wondered for seven years.
It wasn’t money, neither having exorbitant amounts to spend frivolously nor suddenly having next-to-none. It wasn’t that we loved our love life and explored voraciously. It wasn’t your history or mine; it wasn’t even your jealousy or my vehement heart.
It was our isolation, yours and mine, from each other, and from ourselves.
Particularly from ourselves.
I find myself as isolated as I’ve ever been in my life, now, for most of the day, for most days. I still wake up vibrant and excited when I know I’m going somewhere new to explore and see things I’ve never seen before, to indulge in my passion of connecting with strangers, to let my curiosity guide me. I can wash my bare feet in frigid ocean waters as comfortably as burying my toes in warm sands under the intense sun. I wander sweet-scented woods, wondering at the ages of gnarled trees and all they’ve seen.
The difference in my thinking is that I’ve realized that no one thing can be everything, no matter how much I love the activity.
Because: In-between atoms, what is there? In-between the protons and electrons and neutrons, what is there?
There’s a whole lot of nothing, with everything floating, colliding, meandering.
And that, I’ve realized, is where I like to be: In the ‘nothing.’
The past, the present are somewhere in all of that nothing, all of my feelings and all of yours and everyone else’s, too. There’s an endless supply of possibilities… maybe not everything you or I would wish to be, and most certainly some things we don’t favor, but plenty that we do, or might, or could.
Right now, between us, there’s not much. There’s our past, but I’m not really holding onto it anymore. I daresay there’s nothing between us, except perhaps my love for you (which may or may not reach you) and whatever you feel for me (which may or may not reach me).
And I’m okay with that nothing. I can sit very peacefully in nothing, having spent a lot of time in it, listening to the cacophony of guilt and accusations and suppositions and wishes and dreams racing through my head. Having let it be, having remained doing nothing, being nothing, I can listen to a whole lot of things. I can remember nearly anything I want; I can look and examine the past or the present, or dream about and even try to plan the future.
I start to realize that the only reason I wanted you with me, the reason I wanted to see you again, the reason I wanted to re-start our “something” was because I was so desperately afraid of the nothing. I was afraid it would consume me, my feelings, my everything.
Us.
And you.
But: There’s nothing between us now, and it’s not consuming what we were.
There’s nothing between us now, and it’s apparently not consuming you.
There’s nothing between us now and I still love, can still love you. And I still do.
There’s nothing between us now…
And you’re still you.
And, better still (because it matters so much to me, and in me is all of what I love, including you and us):
Why is self confidence arrogant? Why is self-depreciation considered modesty? I worked my [butt] off to be able to have a high opinion of myself. It took a long time and many, many years, and I’m never going to tell – let anyone tell me that I should think less of myself.
Oceans of Mine 