I hate weekends these days...despicable weekends....always disappointing weekends. And I'm like Charlie Brown with the football - I keep looking forward to them! Arg! No singing last night and the weekend caught me by surprise with no plans made at all despite my bevy of suitors. It was a lonely hearts club night at my house. I cooked dinner for James and me and then Liza joined us later - the thought that we'd just stay in and play board games and drink, laugh and have fun. What was I thinking? We are three miserable people and when we get together our misery is compounded. It's really a bad idea these days for us to seek solace in each others' presence without someone fun like Pam to keep things light. The night ended badly. Liza and James fought. James and I fought. It got nasty and ended with him storming out to my "Fuck yourself" launched at his retreating back. I guess you have to be pretty good friends to recover from something like that - we did. Talked it out this morning. But yeah, no pathetic Friday nights at Sarah's anymore with the three bitcheroos.
This morning I lay in bed and dreaded a lonely day. I decided that I either needed to end it or fix it and because I'm a basically life-affirming person I only toyed with the "end it" scenario but couldn't seriously consider it. So fix it, it is. And I think that means spending more time with myself, really embracing this aloneness thing, not trying to fight it, not trying to fill every moment with distraction. I think I need to be OK with lonely, bored, understimulated, sad, grim, heartbroken. I can't keep running from these negative emotions and looking to anesthetize myself with constant activity and human contact.
I have a friend who talks about loving herself. She is a beautiful woman who always thought she would get married and have a family. Somehow that dream eluded her and now she is 60 and those dreams are behind her. She also dated seriously for most of her adult life and she reached a point where she was tired of continually selling herself. So now, she doesn't date at all. I swear if George Clooney asked her out, her response would be, "Thanks, but I don't date." She is amazing - happy, fun, vibrant with a network of people she loves. Most of all she is her own biggest fan, her best lover. That is a lesson in acceptance. No one has the capacity to love me as much as I have the capacity to love myself. No one thinks I am as fascinating as I find myself. No one is with me 24 hours a day except myself. No one puts me to bed and wakes with me more reliably than myself. So given that I can't escape myself and that we spend an awful lot of time together, I think I had better learn to relax when my evening consists of me, myself and I and treat myself the way I would a treasured guest...royally. Sarah=alone by choice...for a while. At least a good portion of the time.
Some of the dating profiles I'm reading are really inspirational...there are amazing men out there who really reveal themselves in an effort to make a connection. After I all but decided to crawl back into my shell today, I read this quote from one gent's profile and it seemed like a sign to stay in the game.
I enjoy connecting with people. Life is not all about 'me'. I like to keep in mind the best things in life are shared. Sharing can be messy, heartbreaking, most excellent, and cool...sometimes all at the same time. We will never know the next great person if we never try to connect. Just take people for who they are, be better to them than they ever expect.
And then this quote from another fellow's site (not original - he lifted it from somewhere):
It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon.
I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain!
I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.
I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like
the company you keep in the empty moments.
Does this speak to you the way it did to me? The idea of sitting with pain and just enduring it, the idea of surrendering to the joyous moments even when you know a relationship is sure to end in pain and tragedy, and the idea of being able to sit alone and like your own company. These are thoughts to hold onto and strive for.
Tonight Victor is coming over for dinner which will be meaningful. He is mega Patrick impatient with me and so I will refrain from mentioning his name and give Victor the happy impression I'm moving on successfully. My friends are like the cheering bet holders at the track watching their favorite horse stuck in the gate. They are screaming at me to cut myself loose, they are crying fowl. They are stamping their feet and exhorting me to get going, to catch up, to cross the finish line ahead of the others the way I've always done in the past. They know I'm a thoroughbred and they're confused as to why I'm behaving like a broken down nag.
The challenge for me today is to embrace the dullness and pain of my life "without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it." There is no place I can hide from it. And from that place of still and quiet acceptance, sitting alone and liking my own company. Your challenge could be the same....if you are filling your life with distractions in an effort to avoid the mirror, find some stillness and spend some time with yourself even if it's damn uncomfortable at first. You really are your own best friend even if you don't always like yourself very much. And it's hard to yell "Fuck Yourself" at your own retreating back when it's attached to you!
Peace,
Sarah
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