On relationships, grief and finding love, one day.

“The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. It may look paradoxical to you, but it’s not. It is an existential truth: only those people who are capable of being alone are capable of love, of sharing, of going into the deepest core of another person—without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the other, without reducing the other to a thing, and without becoming addicted to the other. They allow the other absolute freedom, because they know that if the other leaves, they will be as happy as they are now. Their happiness cannot be taken by the other, because it is not given by the other.”~ Osho

Feeling lonely one day, I vulnerably opened up about my current relationship status on Facebook and received a tremendous amount of not only advise but tender and supportive acknowledgement from many other single women who are also strong, independent and wondering the same thing: why I am alone? Why have I not been asked out?

I received every kind of advise imaginable: I'll set you up with my dad in Cyprus from one young student... I would never ask you out because you're just too amazing (the kind of compliment that feels like an insult)...women who appear powerful simply are intimidating to men... 

But what I heard the most was this: Love yourself first. Be willing to surrender the idea of or the need to be with someone and be content with being alone. 

 

These past 2 years post divorce, I have gone from having someone reflect to me just how beautiful I am to feeling utter despair over the loss of that relationship. The despair was unlike anything I have ever felt before. It was a kind of unworthiness that was so foreign to me that I now, on the other side of it, have a deeper compassion for those who get ensnared in co-dependent relationships and feel their self worth is based upon the pleasing of another person. 

I never thought that would be me. Never. I am, as some of you know, ridiculously independent, confident and believe that only good can come from any circumstance. How did I fall into the trap of wanting and needing someone else's attention so badly to eventually feeling so rejected that I couldn't get out of bed? 

When the someone leaves for whatever reason, temporary or completely, joy can remain but there is a a part of you missing. It's like when you glue two pieces of paper together, there is no way to separate them clean. The paper will tear, leaving traces of each other on each piece. If this is true, I don't believe there can be absolute freedom or agape love like Osho claims. We can practice equanimity but the reality of it is we are human designed for connection and love, and love is sometimes messy not the ideal. 

"Once you have done "everything that can be done," and still not achieved the cure, the success, the hope you longed for, it is easy enough to feel down, demoralized, beaten. Grief is the sense of loss we have over what could have been, what used to be, what is no more. There is a place for all that for sure. And still, I am utterly convicted, that "every death begets a life." The 'death' may be a long held belief overturned, or a pattern disrupted, or a relationship changed, or the actual expiration of a body-form...in any case, we grieve, yes, we feel the loss keenly. And when that has been given its due, if we dare to look up, and out, we will see space before us richly filled, glimmering with the light of existing connections and ones yet to be made, beckoning us onward." ~ Gil Hadley

Moving beyond depression and grief, I feel lighter now. It's like staying up all night, enveloped in the darkness and when the dawn comes, you're almost surprised by the intensity of colors and light as the simplicity and beauty of it embraces you. What was once painful, I can hold in my heart and say yes. Wholeheartedly, yes to it. 

I recognize all I can do is set the intention to love myself without conditions or judgement today, this present moment. The intention opens up the path to soften to it. 

But an Eros or romantic love? I have capacity for that fiery, great love. Even though I am learning to be OK with aloneness, don't I warrant this kind of love? Yes, I believe we all do. 

And agape love? I am willing to invoke and attempt to move beyond my insecurities in order to share love non-possessively. One that can only come from an overflowing of loving myself. 

For those of you about to write me and tell me to just wait and the Universe or God or serendipity will simply bring me the right person at the right time, I will say this: I agree. I am open to what may come and bearing in mind most of the advise I received. 

Always the optimist, I trust that my loving partner will come one day. While I still believe in magic, I am at home within me. 

#30daysofwriting

#writeeverydamnday

#writeyourselfalive