filling the space
20 Jan
I met my husband by the pool table in our college pub in the winter of 1997. I was 21 years old and thought, however naively, that I was all grown up. It seems so crazy now, how sure I was that I knew myself and what I wanted (graduation-job-marriage-house-children-happily-ever-don’t-rock-the-boat-after, thank you very much).
I think back at that young girl and wish I could whisper in her ear,
“Go now, and live a little. Experience. Dream. Risk. Close your eyes and jump. Choose potential over safety. Choose exhilaration over comfort. Choose magic over predictability. Make millions of mistakes so that you will know how to choose what you really need. Love hard and often and without reservation. Be bold. Tell the truth about yourself no matter what the cost. Own your reality without apology. Embrace your darkness along with your light. Know yourself fully before you make promises to another.”
But that’s not what I did. I was to have gone to England after graduation to be an au pair for a classical violinist living in posh London suburb. I had also considered heading to Asia to travel and teach English for a year or two. I was going to live out a dream and explore and have amazing adventures.
Instead I met S. and fell in love, and in my fear of losing him and the future I imagined for us, I talked myself out of my plans. I got a dreary, horrid, underpaid job working for a rental car company and moved into early domesticity, sharing an apartment and a life with him from that point on. And I was happy.
But I have never truly been alone.
With this latest change in my life there exists a new space – one that has not been there for a long, long time. I went straight from the fiercely intertwined partnership of marriage into this heart-wrenching sweetness with e. I staggered both spaces for some time, slowly moving myself from one to the other – but never fully existing in the place in between.
And so now I find myself on my own for the very first time in my life. This will be the first time I am not involved in any relationship that provides me with emotional and physical intimacy, the first time I am not one half of some sort of a partnership. Even though things with e. were never all that stable or dependable – there was still the comfort of that connection to keep me from feeling alone.
And so now there is me. Just me.
Although my life is still (and will always be) hopelessly entwined with the lives of my husband and children, at the root of it all I am standing on my own. It is exhilarating. It is frightening. It is mind boggling. I feel larger than life and very, very small.
There is space – both inside me and surrounding me – that I am accustomed to having filled up by another. Space in my heart and in my mind. Space in my arms and in my hands and in my bed. But, although there is sadness and loneliness in those spaces, they do not feel empty. No, I rather think they feel full; full of reality and full of potential. Still, the first instinct with space is to fill it. To rush to distract, to replace, to find another something or someone to focus on. To seek the freefall of infatuation and to get caught up in something outside of myself.
“It is a transformative experience to simply pause instead of immediately filling up the space. By waiting, we begin to connect with fundamental restlessness and well as fundamental spaciousness”. ~ Pema Chodron.
The challenge here, I think, will be to hold that space for now. My gut tells me that it necessary to not just keep this space open, but to expand it to make it even bigger – and then to learn how to fill it with myself. When the time comes I will be able to welcome someone else into my space, and to share it with them from a place of strength and wholeness.
I came across a quote the other day, from a woman named Susannah who has chronicled her own journey of grief, loss and growth with words, photography and art on her incredible blog, Ink on My Fingers:
‘I know now that sometimes loneliness is needed, time alone to sort through the debris and have the chance to mend your sails before you set off on another voyage; time to work out your place on the earth without the need of another person to anchor you; time to meet yourself in your heart and sit with her without judgment or expectation. It’s never easy, but it is essential.”
I need to take the time to accept and sit quietly with the pain of my losses (both of the magical potential of creating something real with e. and the loss of a profound and very concrete past with S.). I need to lean into the totality of these experiences, to welcome them into myself as integral parts of my growth and learning. I need to figure out how to anchor myself to ME, instead of to another. Instinct makes us want to run from the pain, to hide from the discomfort of experiencing the negative parts of life, but that often leads to us slamming into the same life lessons over and over and over again. I’m ready to move on.
I believe we never manage to let go of painful experiences until we let ourselves experience them completely and without reservation or fear. It is not easy to sit with pain, to not only accept it, but to invite it in the aching and the tears and the regret and welcome ourselves to the experience of it in a real and multi-dimensional way. To say “this fucking sucks, but lets just see what it’s like to dive into it headfirst instead of trying to escape”
When we let the dark emotions flow, something unexpected and unpredictable often occurs. Consciously experienced, the energy of these emotions flows toward healing and harmony. I’ve found that unimpeded grief transforms itself into heightened gratitude; that consciously experiencing fear expands our ability to feel joy; and that being mindful of despair — really entering into the dark night of the soul with the light of awareness — renews and deepens our faith. ~ Miriam Greenspan
That is not to say that I intend to embrace a life of celibacy or that I would close myself to the potential of what comes my way. No, this journey is all about welcoming experience and saying yes to the universe (or to a harmless date with a cute girl). However, there is a difference between recognizing something that comes your way and actively seeking it for the wrong reasons.
And so I think of my 32 year old self, scarred and bruised and weary, but excited and strong and eager, and I think tonight as she is drifting off to dreamland I’ll try to remember to whisper in her ear…
“Go now, and live a little. Experience. Dream. Risk. Close your eyes and jump. Choose potential over safety. Choose exhilaration over comfort. Choose magic over predictability. Make millions of mistakes so that you will know how to choose what you really need. Love hard and often and without reservation. Be bold. Tell the truth about yourself no matter what the cost. Own your reality without apology. Embrace your darkness along with your light. Know yourself fully before you make promises to another.”
I hope she listens.
I met my husband by the pool table in our college pub in the winter of 1997. I was 21 years old and thought, however naively, that I was all grown up. It seems so crazy now, how sure I was that I knew myself and what I wanted (graduation-job-marriage-house-children-happily-ever-don’t-rock-the-boat-after, thank you very much).
I think back at that young girl and wish I could whisper in her ear,
“Go now, and live a little. Experience. Dream. Risk. Close your eyes and jump. Choose potential over safety. Choose exhilaration over comfort. Choose magic over predictability. Make millions of mistakes so that you will know how to choose what you really need. Love hard and often and without reservation. Be bold. Tell the truth about yourself no matter what the cost. Own your reality without apology. Embrace your darkness along with your light. Know yourself fully before you make promises to another.”
But that’s not what I did. I was to have gone to England after graduation to be an au pair for a classical violinist living in posh London suburb. I had also considered heading to Asia to travel and teach English for a year or two. I was going to live out a dream and explore and have amazing adventures.
Instead I met S. and fell in love, and in my fear of losing him and the future I imagined for us, I talked myself out of my plans. I got a dreary, horrid, underpaid job working for a rental car company and moved into early domesticity, sharing an apartment and a life with him from that point on. And I was happy.
But I have never truly been alone.
With this latest change in my life there exists a new space – one that has not been there for a long, long time. I went straight from the fiercely intertwined partnership of marriage into this heart-wrenching sweetness with e. I staggered both spaces for some time, slowly moving myself from one to the other – but never fully existing in the place in between.
And so now I find myself on my own for the very first time in my life. This will be the first time I am not involved in any relationship that provides me with emotional and physical intimacy, the first time I am not one half of some sort of a partnership. Even though things with e. were never all that stable or dependable – there was still the comfort of that connection to keep me from feeling alone.
And so now there is me. Just me.
Although my life is still (and will always be) hopelessly entwined with the lives of my husband and children, at the root of it all I am standing on my own. It is exhilarating. It is frightening. It is mind boggling. I feel larger than life and very, very small.
There is space – both inside me and surrounding me – that I am accustomed to having filled up by another. Space in my heart and in my mind. Space in my arms and in my hands and in my bed. But, although there is sadness and loneliness in those spaces, they do not feel empty. No, I rather think they feel full; full of reality and full of potential. Still, the first instinct with space is to fill it. To rush to distract, to replace, to find another something or someone to focus on. To seek the freefall of infatuation and to get caught up in something outside of myself.
“It is a transformative experience to simply pause instead of immediately filling up the space. By waiting, we begin to connect with fundamental restlessness and well as fundamental spaciousness”. ~ Pema Chodron.
The challenge here, I think, will be to hold that space for now. My gut tells me that it necessary to not just keep this space open, but to expand it to make it even bigger – and then to learn how to fill it with myself. When the time comes I will be able to welcome someone else into my space, and to share it with them from a place of strength and wholeness.
I came across a quote the other day, from a woman named Susannah who has chronicled her own journey of grief, loss and growth with words, photography and art on her incredible blog, Ink on My Fingers:
‘I know now that sometimes loneliness is needed, time alone to sort through the debris and have the chance to mend your sails before you set off on another voyage; time to work out your place on the earth without the need of another person to anchor you; time to meet yourself in your heart and sit with her without judgment or expectation. It’s never easy, but it is essential.”
I need to take the time to accept and sit quietly with the pain of my losses (both of the magical potential of creating something real with e. and the loss of a profound and very concrete past with S.). I need to lean into the totality of these experiences, to welcome them into myself as integral parts of my growth and learning. I need to figure out how to anchor myself to ME, instead of to another. Instinct makes us want to run from the pain, to hide from the discomfort of experiencing the negative parts of life, but that often leads to us slamming into the same life lessons over and over and over again. I’m ready to move on.
I believe we never manage to let go of painful experiences until we let ourselves experience them completely and without reservation or fear. It is not easy to sit with pain, to not only accept it, but to invite it in the aching and the tears and the regret and welcome ourselves to the experience of it in a real and multi-dimensional way. To say “this fucking sucks, but lets just see what it’s like to dive into it headfirst instead of trying to escape”
When we let the dark emotions flow, something unexpected and unpredictable often occurs. Consciously experienced, the energy of these emotions flows toward healing and harmony. I’ve found that unimpeded grief transforms itself into heightened gratitude; that consciously experiencing fear expands our ability to feel joy; and that being mindful of despair — really entering into the dark night of the soul with the light of awareness — renews and deepens our faith. ~ Miriam Greenspan
That is not to say that I intend to embrace a life of celibacy or that I would close myself to the potential of what comes my way. No, this journey is all about welcoming experience and saying yes to the universe (or to a harmless date with a cute girl). However, there is a difference between recognizing something that comes your way and actively seeking it for the wrong reasons.
And so I think of my 32 year old self, scarred and bruised and weary, but excited and strong and eager, and I think tonight as she is drifting off to dreamland I’ll try to remember to whisper in her ear…
“Go now, and live a little. Experience. Dream. Risk. Close your eyes and jump. Choose potential over safety. Choose exhilaration over comfort. Choose magic over predictability. Make millions of mistakes so that you will know how to choose what you really need. Love hard and often and without reservation. Be bold. Tell the truth about yourself no matter what the cost. Own your reality without apology. Embrace your darkness along with your light. Know yourself fully before you make promises to another.”
I hope she listens.
Just grand – you land firmly on your feet while your thoughts soar. And quote one of my favorite Buddhist authors.
Slam dunk (well you have to start working on your sports terminology).