billyfivecrows

Today, the lonliness hit like a ton of bricks in slow motion.

For the most part, I do fine with this self-designed hermitage. The silence easily becomes space, and I effortlessly exist. I don't have much use for memories except to trigger actions in the present; nostalgia is a sickly surrogate for immediate emotion.

When I'm alone for so long, meditation becomes a constant. Every movement flows into the next. Even the awkward is elegant, easy to swallow down and digest into gold, forming limbs of an ethereal Midas. Everything is touched into perfection and weightlessness.

Today was different.

In my late teens/early twenties I was surrounded by admirers who hated me and those I admired as well as hated. It was Dionysian. Sex, drugs, and raunchy whole. I thought it was freedom. What it turned out to be was self proclaimed non-conformists all banding together and saying and doing the same things. Dressing alike. The same music. The same hideous hideouts night after night. Burning our brains in garbage cans to keep warm. Freezing our tongues to keep our drinks cold. And it tore me apart. Limb from limb.

Frenzy.

It wasn't rebellion. It was Pop-art anarchy.

So to save self, I went into hiding and stayed there for years, coming out to buy booze and art supplies. I wrote, painted, worked odd jobs, had the odd relationship, lost the woman I loved more than anything else in the world...then a five year celibacy.

And I poisoned myself almost to death with thousands of gallons of alchohol.

I survived. Barely.

And I came out the otherside of my desperate shamanistic retreat with volumes of work. (And that's what it was. It was a conscious breaking down of who I was. Excess to reach the otherside, to find bliss. Now I know that there's kinder, more gentle ways...I knew then, but it didn't matter. I was on a mission.)

The mission completed itself for me. I sobered up. Either that or die. And it was coming quick.

I was't ready to die. Too much to do.

A year went by. I began to experience and relish the beginnings of artistic success... and I was drawn to Reiki energy work. (If you don't know what that is...look it up, or ask me and I'll write you back.)

It changed my life for the better. In so many ways. But...

I got into a relationship with my teacher. It was whirlwind. We never stopped. We had three seperate homes. We studied and learned, teaching each other, and others, so much. We packed twenty years into two. But there was never much time for us to build an "us".

I was fairly newly sober. My life was beginning again. I needed to breathe and to explore. I said I wasn't content time and time again. She didn't much listen. So after much painful deliberation, I rather abruptly ended the relationship.

She was much older than me and a very good teacher, but very set in her ways on a personal level, and I could no longer conform. I was losing myself.

I broke her heart. We fought online for months.

I returned to my personal underground.


Which brings me to today...


We've reached peace.

We're friends. We're learning each other, I would dare to say, for the first time. We've both grown and changed so much in the past 9 months...became more ourselves.

And it's hurting my heart.

I don't want her back. I need to go on.

But the memories are flooding in. The good ones.

And the "what if's" as well.

I'm alone again. When I'm allowing of it's conscious design, I'm fine.

But this is lonely.

And I don't want to backtrack just to quell my lonliness.

I'm still not sure when, or even if, I'm moving out of state.


I feel stuck.

I feel lost and confused.

What actions do these memories trigger?


What would you do?