on going to sleep.

I have been feeling so far away from myself lately. I think part of it is living alone in a pandemic—if I talk out loud and there is no one to hear me, do I even really exist? This past year has really brought into focus with excruciating detail how much other people remind me of who I am. All my good parts, the lively pieces of who I am exist in relationship to others.

This is very different from not being able to be alone—I haven’t ever been one to have my identity defined by those around me (though I am a well-practiced chameleon). I have found that for most of my time here on earth, I have avoided relational commitment while simultaneously dancing with relational longing (don’t leave me but don’t come to close). Now, don’t get me wrong, I am very good at procured intimacy. I can share with you vulnerable things, secret things about myself that I give away quite easily. But sharing and showing are two different things…

Just like being alone and loneliness.

It’s so, so easy to go to sleep in your soul when you are lonely and far away from yourself. And this is how the great mystics often define loneliness—being so distant from your true being, so disconnected from your grounded self that your heart physically hurts. I often describe loneliness as a longing—a reaching for something that is just out of reach. It can feel like a wide open ache, or an emotional straightjacket while you watch the world continue on without you.

The business of being lonely is very busy indeed.

I say busy because I have found that in the vast emptiness of loneliness I reach for what is outside of me, over and over again. It’s interesting because loneliness is a feeling we all want to avoid, but instead of addressing it directly we almost always build carefully around it. The thing is we usually know the thing that will make us feel better, but we are too depleted (we feel) to get there.

So we numb out, turn away. We let ourselves fade slowly because the thought of trying to do anything else feels like the absolute hardest thing. We allow stagnation because at least it isn’t scary. 

Predictability has its perks after all.

Staying awake is an intentional task, and quite frankly I myself am tired as hell.

And yet—

I am also sad, self-loathing, and all around dead inside.

I don’t want to feel this way, but I am so worn down from all this living.

And so the cycle continues—self-directed misery, avoidance, lethargy, apathy, loneliness…

Repeat.

To want more than this seems like not only an incredible amount of effort, but risk as well.

For starters, I would have to learn to like myself.

I would have to put myself out there.

I would need to learn to draw outside the lines, just a little.

I would have to draw my attention away from what is not there, to what is.

And all of this will require effort.

Yikes!

We have a saying in therapy:

When the pain of not doing something becomes greater than the pain of doing it, you will move forward.

My friend Erin and I have another saying—sometimes you just have to sit in your dirty diaper for a bit before you are ready for a change.

You may not be ready to do anything about the way you are feeling. I am not even sure I am.

But I do know this.

There is more.

This is not the end.

In the choice between going to sleep or coming to life, I have faith that I will eventually turn the corner.

That the dark will shift ever so slightly, and I will find myself again.

That the spark is still there, even if it is the faintest it’s ever been.

That even if it is only my one, solitary voice being echoed back to me that it is still my voice nonetheless—

And the only one like it.

I hope that wherever you are today you will know that you are not alone.

That things will get better.

And that soon we will begin to wake up, just a bit more.

Until the feeling of living brings our dry bones to life once again.