solitude

When I was in high school I was hyper religious in an isolated sense. By the time I entered college, however, I was hyper employed and way too involved in my current relationship to have even muscle memory of my prior allegiances. That relationship was followed up, with literally no downtime, by another even less productive relationship. That relationship was punctuated by another brief relationship. When I returned to the prior relationship I was desperate for someone to hold my hand and my heart. I was seeking what I had lost by neglecting my spirituality and openly defying nearly every comforting aspect of it.

Now I am sitting at a hard surfaced table at Borders books surrounded by people nose deep in magazines and books, and I am wondering how much I have in common with each of them. I am relationship deprived in a way I have never felt before. I am without a significant other for the first time since I was licensed to legally drive a vehicle, and I am unsure how to proceed.

On one hand, I am terrified. I’m frightened of not having a body to hold and an ear with which to share my day. I am also frighteningly calm for having only recently become single with only slight input into the termination of the original coupling. I am reflecting on my new loneliness, but also on the loneliness I felt while still in a relationship that was falling to pieces even I scrabbled to paste it back together.

At the end of my mental scrambling, however, I feel an intense need to walk and reflect in solitude, and an equally strong need to be surrounded by God and people that love him. Oddly, I am uncomfortable with this declaration. I am at ease with my need for solitude, but uneasy with my need for relationships. I feel an almost desperate need to scramble for romantic involvement that I could no doubt find with relative ease. I am also hesitant to indulge this need because I do not wish to find myself, several months, or even years from now, in the same place, struggling to extract my heart from its entanglement in the arms of a man that no more wants it than the responsibilities that come with it. Even to say that out loud is crushing to my new fragility. I must say it however, out loud and frequently. I must repeat it to myself as frequently as I have dried tears in these last few days, and as frequently as I will regress in the next few days.

I anticipate these regressions, however, and I will fight them vigilantly. I am afraid that I will repeat past mistakes; that I will seek solace in the superficial comfort of coupling, or act out in an attempt to distance myself from my pain. In either case I will only be delaying the inevitable heartache. Right now I am determined to embrace the pain and work it out. Whatever that might look like.