Sold the cupboard a couple days ago. Started packing boxes yesterday. So liberating!
Just sold my bicycle this morning — bittersweet feelings for that…
My swimmer/artist friend said they sense a “sproutiness” in me at the moment, like I’m “a seed starting to grow sprouts” — I love this image and believe it captures my recent and current emotions very well.
Today I’m feeling tired but happy. And hopeful. Tired from a lot of positive, constructive activities. Hopeful from change on my horizon.
Moving to California six years ago was one of the best decisions of my life — probably my best one to date. But moving away from California now, at least temporarily, feels just as good, just as liberating!
Yes, my friend, I feel like I’m a seed now starting to sprout: I can feel my deeper, healthier goals and dreams and wishes taking form, finally shaking layers of dust or frost off — like shoots slowly starting to grow, preparing for the springtime.
I just hope to be able to hold all these feelings well enough to allow the dreams to take form concretely and in a healthier way than in the past…
This is not simply a “New Year’s resolution”, it’s a “New Life resolution”, very appropriately coming when I’m getting ready to move out of California and try Colorado.
A few good friends of mine have more than once told me, “You’re awesome”, “You’re a super cool person”, “You are a diamond and whoever finds you finds a treasure”. They’ve usually told me this kind of thing in moments when I was struggling or feeling really low and/or lonely. I’ve always been grateful to them for saying such things to me and I’m sure that their encouraging and supportive words have helped me through many rough spots. But I never deeply “believed” those lovely words — I never felt “awesome” or “super cool” or like a “diamond” really profoundly. Until today.
Today I finally absorbed it: “I am awesome”! And I am done wasting this awesomeness on people who cannot wholly engage with it, for their own personal reasons or limits.
Yes, I have so many qualities and skills, and I have achieved so much.
But I am also very bad at romantic relationships. I have had the tendency almost my whole adult life to get into romantic or “special” relationships that drain me, in which I am trying to “save” the other person or often “putting up with” far too much, in one way or another. In me, I have all this light, this bright energy, this enthusiasm; but then it’s like I’m afraid of letting my light shine through fully or scared of releasing and following its full potential — my full potential.
What happened yesterday evening was the last straw — “the feather that broke the camel’s back”. But I’ve learned to use pain and anger to bounce back, stronger.
So that’s it, I’m done: from now on, I’m not going to get into romantic or “special” relationships that stifle me or drain me. I’m going to stop trying to save or baby-sit these guys.
From now on, I’m going to seek — or allow closeness with — only persons who can take my brightness and reflect it back to me and radiate it out to the world together with me, while I do the same with their light.
“[…] work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do” [“The adventures of Tom Sawyer” by Mark Twain]
I believe there’s great truth in this statement — at least, it often feels like that to me.
Play, or fun, particularly shared fun/play, is something I really miss. Some shared, fun, playful, mindless recklessness or wildness with somebody, possibly someone close…
I’ve been missing it especially here in California: I think it’s been partly due to the fact that I was occupied trying to build my career (as well as rebuild almost my whole life in general), but also partly to the culture here, to a different attitude towards fun or life in general, to different values and/or different ways of people connecting. And the pandemic has only made matters worse: it has effectively eliminated the only few sources of genuine fun or shared play I had found and was slowly reintegrating into my life.
I find this extremely sad, and it hurts. I often find myself wondering whether I’ll ever have any truly shared fun or genuine play with others again…
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P.S.: As idle as this issue might sound, I actually believe it to be important. When I talk about genuine play and/or shared fun, I mean a way — or a cause — of feeling alive, of liveliness. Therefore, the lack/loss of genuine play or shared fun is a cause of depression (at least for me, for sure). So it’s actually a health — even healthcare and/or social — issue…
For the first time in a long while, this morning I recognized the person in my bed. I finally felt like my good old self again: that person who wakes up feeling happy and hopeful, looking forward to the day ahead of them, no matter what negative thoughts they might have had the previous night; that person who feels full of energy and can’t stop smiling despite the rainy weather. That’s what I used to be like, almost every single morning. It hadn’t happened in ages, but today it happened again — finally! And I’m still smiling now!
I could hardly believe this feeling — I can still hardly believe it now, and I know it might not last — so I’m celebrating it: by writing about it here, and by repeating to myself, “Good morning, me, welcome back!”
Yesterday’s NPR “All things considered” edition seemed a little more varied that the usual deluge of “bad/negative news”, so I’m going to share some of the news-clips that gave me some hope and/or diversion last night.
The first day of 2022 has been graced with gorgeous weather in this part of California: warm & sunny, and hardly any wind.
I started this New Year alone last night, which was extremely sad for me.
But today, also thanks to the wonderful weather, I’ve been able to transform some of that painful loneliness into more peaceful solitude.
My coping mechanisms haven’t varied much: going completely offline with my cell-phone off to shut out the world and possible pain coming from it; getting out in nature; exercising intensely.
Yes, I’m alone today, I’m spending the whole day — New Year’s Day, a holiday and the first day of the New Year — completely on my own. But while yesterday I ended up alone against my own choice & the originals plans, today I’m alone by my own choice and I’m doing some of the things I love the most and rediscovering the connection with nature (which automatically helps me feels less alone) as well as with myself in a healthier way.
I’m almost seeing the glass half full again… almost!
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“Let everything happen to you:
Beauty and terror.
Just keep going.
No feeling is final.”
[Rainer Maria Rilke]
There’s a saying in Italian, “Meglio soli che malaccompagnati”, which means, “We’re better off alone than in the wrong (or bad) company”.
I agree with this saying.
But I’ve been so alone for so long, and I’ve been feeling so lonely for so long, that I’m beginning to think, “Better off dead than so alone/lonely”.
This morning I woke up happy. One factor is the sunshine, for sure, as well as having been able to get the right amount of satisfying exercise yesterday, on the first sunny day in weeks.
But there’s also something deeper: I love New Year’s! I love the symbolism around shedding and leaving behind what we don’t need, being grateful for all we received and learned, and facing the oncoming year with hope. I’ve always enjoyed celebrating New Year’s and since my move to California, it has become even more important in a positive way because it feels like the turn of the year then ushers in my own personal “liberation” that occurred a couple weeks after New Year’s in January 2016.
Every year, I ask myself: what do I want to leave behind, and what do I want to bring along with me into the New Year?
Last year, I spent New Year’s completely alone, for the first time, because of the pandemic: it was unexpectedly lovely, and that’s when I started to come into myself fully, eventually leading to my coming-out this summer and feeling so much more whole.
This year, I feel it’s particularly important to ask myself, “what do I want to leave behind, and what do I want to bring along with me into the New Year?”, also because of my upcoming move to Colorado with its ensuing changes and possibly new opportunities.
So, what do I want to leave behind, and what do I want to bring along with me into the New Year?
In the call with my stress management counselor yesterday, we were talking about my feelings, my worries, my stressors, and my depression — the latter being something I have never experienced before in my life. And I suddenly realized (and said to my counselor) that there’s nothing I really need to change in my current situation: I have all I need to survive and could live like this for ever, or at least for a long time. But I’m not happy in my current situation. This isn’t new to me: I have been unhappy and changed my situation already several times in the past. The difference now is that I can only see my failures and the difficulties that lie ahead of me, instead of my achievements and the opportunities. Basically, I’m seeing the glass half empty, while in the past I’ve always been the kind of person who sees the glass half full: so in this sense, I don’t recognize myself.
When I said this, the counselor asked me when the shift had occurred and why I thought it had happened. After some reflection, I realized this shift occurred mostly over the course of the past year (2021) and then I slowly listed the causes: the glass-ceiling that was made explicit to me at work at the end of 2019 (even before the pandemic was a “thing” here) and that caused so much anger and pain in me; the pandemic hitting hard in February 2020 with the ensuing lockdown, and then my own COVID-19 illness in March 2020; months of extreme isolation & loneliness for me, and an extremely long recovery from having had COVID-19; teaching from home throughout 2021, which was stressful (I’m grateful I had a safe job but I did it only for survival); and on top of all this, intermittently for two years, a weird, confusing but intense and somehow deep relationship with an “unavailable” person, that ultimately caused me a heartbreak.
So, what am I leaving behind? I feel like I need to leave behind two years’ worth of burdens, shedding or turning two full years, not just one…
I’m going to leave behind the actual places and people had caused me pain, to avoid becoming bitter. I’m going to leave behind a job that is relatively safe but not stable or good enough, and not gratifying enough. I’m going to leave behind an unhealthy relationship. But especially, I want to leave behind the glass-half-empty perspective on things that is not truly mine.
And what do I want to bring along with me into the New Year and new State? This answer might need revisiting in a few weeks or months…
For now, I want to bring along the lessons learned; the beautiful memories; my whole self as I’ve discovered it so clearly during this pandemic; the pain inasmuch as it heightens the joys; the parts of my job and professional connections that are good; gratitude; openness/open-mindedness. And especially, the hope of being able to regain my glass-half-full perspective on things.
The Little Prince and the Fox 