Libertymojo,

I’m sorry for your continued lamentation, and can understand how alone we sometimes feel when we begin to unravel the mystery of ourselves. It does sound like there is some infection in your wound, doc, and it may be making everything harder than it needs to be. Consider for a moment the nature of pain. It is biologically designed to grab our attention, push our brain to figure out what is causing it, and then remove that cause. We get a splinter, and it agitates us until we remove it. We break a bone, and it hurts until we heal. Emotional pain and grief is the same, we weep until we’re done, then maybe a few sniffles here and there, but its better, fine.

In your case, in sounds like the wound is figuring out the balance between self nurturing and self indulgence. To weep during our grief, but not fall into lamentation and self pity. To think about ourselves, but not so consistently that we overlook the many blessings around us. For instance, you feel darkness inside because you feel lonely, and want to share time and space with another. But it goes further than that, your mind pushes you well beyond that. “I gave my all and the world shit on my face” which leaves you without an option. As though all women would treat you in such a way, as though you’re just flawed in some way. Not so. You slipped on the floor (had an intimacy that failed) and broke a bone. As you are healing, you keep walking on the bone, so it isn’t healing as fast. Said differently, keep crying, weeping, and eventually you’ll get bored. Perhaps that’s now? Perhaps not.

Then, instead of some hopeless “I just don’t know what to do with myself, how to find love”, you’ll stand up and start growing what you want to have. Not “throw all my eggs in one basket and hope that it holds”, which is dumb, but rather “go explore, and find what makes me happy”. A great place to start, in my opinion, is metta meditation. Metta is the feeling of loving friendship that arises in the upper chest area, and does some wonderful things for us. When we practice metta, our mind becomes peaceful and smooth. This gives us an easier base to work from, a stable ground to return to when we are done crying, done rippling. Consider “Sharon Salzburg guided metta meditation” on YouTube if interested.

Finally, try to be patient, gentle with yourself and your pain. Don’t become agitated with yourself for crying, for feeling sad. That just adds a new layer. Or, don’t be frustrated with yourself for being agitated with yourself for being sad. Just let those ripples go, and cry your tears, accept your sorrow. Its helping you become more alert. Consider a metaphor. Imagine we are given $100 a day to live off of. If we give all 100 to our partner, hoping they will go to the store for us, then we have to accept that we will feel hungry if they take the 100 bucks and ditch us. That’s life, our own unskillfulness. Instead, we can take 25 and get our own food, 25 for shelter, 25 for entertainment/investment, and 25 for charity. As we dance along the path in this way, we find someone that likes the same things, takes care of themselves too, and doesn’t ask us to give them our 100 bucks. Said concretely, it is folly to get our sense of self worth from others, or from a romantic partner… rather, we grow contentment that we can breathe, see, dance, sing, explore and help. Then, when we find a dance partner, we become held together by mutual desire and deep knowing of ourselves and each other, rather than needing each other to feel whole.

Keep breathing, brother, the light isn’t at the end of the tunnel, its in the torch in your hand!

With warmth,
Matt