on being alone

(i just spent the last hour+ typing this post and it magically disappeared from my page...here's my futile attempt to re-create)

confession: i love being alone

i was always that kid who "talks too much in class", is "overly social" and "could spend less time visiting and more time working". well, my teachers will sorely regret these comments when i skyrocket to fame as the greatest blogger who ever lived. whoa, fantasy overtook me there for a moment. my bad. from early on, i established my identity in the fine art of social butterflyism and built my life around constantly being with other people. and for the longest time, i don't think i realized that had everything to do with me not knowing who i was. why would i want to be alone and spend time with myself, someone i had no idea about, when i could be with other people far more entertaining and lively? new school years were gold mines to me - new teachers, classes and FRIENDS. MORE FRIENDS. college was like motha flippin summer camp. moving in was followed by a flurry of friend requests and gwinn dates. then i moved to texas and set up camp as the self-proclaimed Queen of Del Rio, i made friends faster than wal-mart could sell out of cholula and pampers. and many of these beautiful people are nearer and dearer to me than most i'd met in my previous 23 years. i was even chided for being too friendly by a certain someone, citing their mother's wisdom that, "you can't be friends with everyone. it shows you have no taste".

then i migrated back to the emerald city full of all this steam only to find myself homeless and pretty alone. not hobo-under-the-overpass homeless but living-in-my-boss'-basement-and-babysitting-every-day-for-free kind of homeless. which is worse? you tell me. and the strangest thing happened - real life. friends had real jobs and lives outside of their 9-5 and seeing friends took work. i got pretty lonely, pretty quick. lowest of the low was calling my parents sobbing after i'd spent 7 hours after work just sitting on the couch zoning. i was so depressed i couldn't even get up after feigning function all day at work. those few months were so blue. i read a lot and threw an inordinate amount of pity parties. i made very little effort to see people, expecting them to reach out to me. and then slowly but surely, the cloud lifted. i forced myself to start doing things - go sailing with my 60 year old co-worker and his beer-swilling cronies, travel and see new places, go home a lot and deepen my relationship with family and friends, got a gym membership and yoga-ed the days away, got this delicious puppy who's stolen my heart and my free time. i reconnected with old friends and thrived meeting new, beautiful folk like BTHOMP and br@!n and their wolfpack that followed.

and somehow i found myself not only loving these times of new adventures and people but also relishing the time i spent alone. things started making a little more sense too. of course i'd never enjoyed being alone before because i never had been. i'd never taken the time to use loneliness to excavate what was inside me and see what i loved, treasured and had failed to nurture. i finally understood what rainer rilke meant when he said,

be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. amd the point is, to live everything. live the questions now. perhaps you with then gradually, without knowing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

it took that heavy season of aloneness to really understand what i'm about, what i want out of life and where i'm going. and the victory has been sweet - i feel a renewed sense of purpose, self-love and appreciation for those wonderful people in my life who feed the heart of who i am. so go. spend some serious time being alone. park it on a bench with your iPhone, a good book and a blank notebook. write, read, relish! get to know yourself really, really well and live everything. live those questions and don't be surprised when you find yourself standing amongst the answers.