3-Sanctuary in Mourning

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Nature helps more than anything I think, and I am surrounded by her beauty, grace and majesty here. Even though much of it is laced with memories of him, it somehow soothes me more than anything.  It provides me some outlet, some place to be where I can just be myself and empty out more.  I went to the beach today for a sunset walk and a little boogy board session. At first entering the water alone, I longed for him to be out there somewhere paddling around with me. Just knowing he was there always gave me some comfort and security getting way out past the breakers. My heart ached and for a moment I thought I might just paddle out and keep paddling and not look back, that maybe today would be the day I’d really just disappear. 

I felt nothing but empty out there.  Little me, alone going into this huge ocean, no one else anywhere around. The beach was totally deserted this evening.   No surfers, no walkers, no one but me out there for as far as I could see. The universe seemed to be affirming my aloneness for me. No one would even see me go, and days later, just like the guy who fell in the river near the farm, they’d find my car abandoned in the sand.   Maybe I’d wash up on the shore, bloated, with my toes and fingers chewed up by fish. 

I don’t know.  I’m not really suicidal, but sometimes it seems easier. The only reason I could think of not to was that my mother would be heart broken and I knew I couldn’t do that to her or to my friends.  I paddled slowly out, ducking the waves and surrendering to their power and experienced one of my most effortless experiences in getting out yet.  Something fluid was happening inside of me tonight.  I watched schools of fish coming thru the clear glassy blue water, and suddenly I forgot my pain. 

The beauty and tranquility of the ocean, and the setting sun took me over. That and the urgency of getting out of the way of the big set waves that were rolling in ready to crash down on me demanded my full attention. I caught a nice wave, and rolled into the shore feeling glad I’d made the choice to come out to the ocean. There wasn’t any real joy in the ride, I’m too numb right now to feel much joy, but at least it gave me a diversion for a while, and I enjoyed the water and waves more tonite than I have in some time.

Now, with the sun having set, I am back to my little casita on the hill with a whole nite in front of me with nowhere to go, no one to distract me, and only a lonely little meowing cat to love who is really a little too mangey to love much. I’m reading a good book on dreaming, and I will ask tonite for a dream to help me see the good in this time more, and to find more appreciation for it than I am currently feeling. 

I suppose it’s natural to mourn after almost 8 years of my life given to creating a life with another person who is just suddenly gone. A man I loved more than I should have perhaps, and still love with my whole heart. I suppose it’s natural to feel a little lost and alone living in a foreign country where I can only marginally communicate, with few friends to call or go to for comfort when the man I love and lived with has been gone for only 5 days. 

I suppose it’s natural and I’m doing OK overall, yet the aching and the emptiness are intense and overwhelming in moments, and while I am trying to allow them the space to move thru, and to not fill the lonlieness too much, if my dream told me tonite of a way out of this place, I would grab that dream and fly away.

Tonite I pray for good sleep, guidance in the dream world and waking with a brighter horizon.

2: Twenty One Days in a House on a Hill

-->I have 21 days of living alone in this little house on the hill ahead of me. Hours and hours, sometimes days of total solitude await me, and to be honest, a part of me wants to change my ticket and fly back home to friends, family and comfort today. A part of me feels I might go stark raving mad if I even can make it thru 21 more days like the last 5 have been. They haven’t been that bad really I guess, but the aching and aloneness eat at me in moments, and there is nowhere to go to escape. There is no one and nowhere to go to for solace in this. There is absolutely nothing to do but be here now with this.

The truth is, in spite of my "strong woman" exterior, I feel totally lost without his constant companionship. I feel raw and pulpy like an overripe mango. I am sickeningly empty to my core and feeling very numb and somewhat incapacitated. It’s literally physically hard to move sometimes. I don't have a lot of desire to do anything and feel like I am just existing for no other reason than to get thru this. 


I feel like my life purpose has been sapped out of me. I guess I just didn't realize how much energy I put into caring for him, feeding him, and nurturing his needs at the cost of my own. No human has ever gotten so close to me, been so compatible with me, or understood me with as much clarity, tenderness or natural essence as he did. No one else has ever even come close. Most of the time, he was the only person I really wanted to be with.  It was so comfortable, and so natural with him from the very first minute we met. I've never had anything close to that kind of connection with another human. 


He knew me better than I knew myself in moments, and always had the medicine I needed even when I didn’t like it, even now. He spoke the words I didn't want to speak for myself: he knew he wasn’t good enough for me more than I knew that he wasn't.  He knew I wasn’t being cared for as much as I deserved even when I couldn’t speak it.   He knew he couldn’t be the man I need, even though I saw him as that more than what may have been true. I saw him as a king, a god man who could stand up to my fire and bring me to my softest most compassionate loving. All I saw in him was beauty and grace, a God in form.


None of it matters now. I ended it all.  I had the courage he didn't have to walk away even when the love was sweet and alive. "If you love someone, let them go." It's all I hear some days running thru my head, and while it's was the hardest thing I've ever done on some level, there is also a knowingness that it must be this way: like it or not. And right now I don't like it. I feel cheated, betrayed by love and devastated.


Yesterday, I sat for hours in the hammock, unable to consider even moving, letting the sounds of the jungle take over my body and mind for as long as I could. Always the aloneness would bring me back, but there were moments of deep peace too, moments of complete stillness and those are the moments I am living for now.


Peace is a funny thing too: it has it’s own hollowness somehow. I feel sometimes in those moments of total stillness that that is what death is like. Stillpoint. Where all of existence is merged into me, I am floating timelessly in the place between here and no where, conscious of every little insect, the roar of the ocean, the wind, the earth beneath me, but attached to none of it. I am hovering in a sea of stillness. It is a precious and beautiful place. Maybe that’s part of the reason to meditate and learn stillness, is to prepare us for death. To prepare us for that place between the worlds where nothing ever changes, moves or whispers. 


Today it has been 5 full days since he left. I miss him to my core, and at the same time feel a sense of relief that it is done and finally I can move through this and get beyond it, even if it is slow and painful, at least it has begun.



My prayer for this day is that my heart will start to mend and the aching and sickness in my belly will surrender to God’s will for change in my life.

1-Abandoned to Aloneness

7 AM April 5, 2010
When I awake, the first thing I feel is my aloneness. The place where he used to be is empty next to me.  Within me there is an aching, a hole that feels unfillable, a void that feels eternal.  Every morning my thoughts go first to him. 

Where is he? How is he? Does he wake with a piece of emptiness too? Does he feel anything like I do? 

The struggle every morning right now is to not break down completely, or at least to not cry too long. The pain in my heart is a profound aching. There is a squeezing pressure that wants to pour the water from my eyes and calls me to drown myself forever in the sea stretching endlessly before me, taunting me with it’s mesmerizing presence, day and nite. 

Along with the aching, comes the cry to God: the call for some mercy, some other presence to fill the void, to make me whole again, to show me some grace and compassion. This call fills my being and I am hungry for some message, some acknowledgement that I am not really as alone as I feel.

I feel utterly and totally abandoned. Abandoned by love, abandoned by God even. How can anything hurt so much and make me feel as sick as I do? How can this life bring such intense grief at the loss of true love? And of course I know love can't truly be lost, but when the physical presence of that person is gone, the space, the emptiness is dramatically evident. Maybe only the death of a loved one hurts more than this kind of death, I don't really know that piece yet.  I don’t think I want to.

This feels like a death of sorts ending an eight year long, tender, loving relationship as I am now.  I feel like in order to really move on, I have to feel and see something I loved and cherished as dead between us or I can’t totally let go. Some part of me wishes I’d never let myself love so fully, and so deeply. I am angry at myself for completely abandoning my own knowingness that I was giving too much of myself away.  Still another part of me is only grateful for knowing such a sweet love.  I feel blessed that, in truth, it is not dead, but only evolving into something I know not as of yet. I wouldn't change one moment of loving him.   It was my joy to give myself so fully.

Yet, even that knowing doesn’t make it any easier. The knowing doesn’t take away this ache.  It doesn’t have me waking up singing in joy, nor does it allow me to be resting quickly and easefully at night the way I did with his strong arms and peaceful, soothing presence always near by.

Last night the fear of my aloneness came creeping in when I came home to this dark little house tucked up on the hill looking over the sea where I am living in Costa Rica. Fears came sweeping in that some dark intruder was inside, that someone had known he had left and was waiting inside to attack me, hurt me, damage me more. I couldn’t sleep. I found myself lying in bed for hours listening to every little sound and talking myself out of the fear with logic that seemed weak and floppy, but that was actually truth. 

“No one is here to hurt me.  Nothing is different since he left. You are safe here.” “You can rest, you are protected.” Still, the knowingness didn’t subside the fears. I longed for his hand to hold onto as I fell asleep, the way we fell asleep together for nearly 8 years, hands touching softly beneath the sheet. I didn’t sleep til after 2 AM, and over and over my mind flipped between him, and God, between the knowingness that I was safe, and the simultaneous knowingness of my total vulnerability should some crazy man jump thru the window in the middle of the night.  I lay there miserably fenced between the warrior/shaman/priestess knowingness that this is a valuable, good and crucial time for me to grow, and the heartbreak of a woman near 40 who is ready to be with her lifelong partner, to build and grow in life and love together.

Clearly, I am on a new journey; maybe the biggest one yet of my life. I have 21 days of living alone in the jungle by the sea in Costa Rica to create a new life to return to that can inspire me enough to get thru this and want to love and live anew. 

My old life is gone. My beautiful angel who has held me, loved me, comforted me, and been my rock, my stability, my home and my place to run to is gone. The one who always kept me laughing, lite and re-finding grace is gone and I made it so. 

I am alone in the world again at 39, fighting pre-cancerous mutating cells in this little body, with no place to go but inside myself for the strength, answers and guidance of what to do next with my life. On day 5 of the journey, I am simply trying to find the gratitude for this, and in some moments I do indeed feel peace. 

For nearly eight years, one beautiful man has been my sun. He has been the love and light I have revolved around, he was woven deeply into my world and I in his.  Together we had created our own sweet jewel that only he and I truly knew the radiance of. 


I have lived and breathed his life and breath, loving him in a way that I never knew was possible. I gave up almost everything of myself to maintain being with him, and willingly and joyfully as nothing or no one else has ever brought me such peace, joy and comfort as he did. He helped me to heal parts of myself that were shattered and gave me a foundation to move from into the world to start to re-find myself. 

I had very recently begun to actually believe that he would be my partner for many years to come, even for life.  I was just starting to feel that we would build a lifelong future together. He had actually finally won my trust and my faith, after years of my own skeptism that he could really be ready for that, or that I even wanted that. He told me he would take care of me, and I was starting to believe him. He told me he wanted to be with me for many years to come, and I believed him. He even told me that he thought I might be the one, and after years of resisting that that possibility could even exist for me, he had finally convinced me that it might actually be possible that a man could love me that deeply. 

Even before he left just 5 days ago, he was putting hope into me, that maybe someday he’d come back and take care of me, telling me he thought we’d be back together someday. His love has always been there when I doubted. When I wanted to move on, wanted to let go, wanted to run, he'd stand strong, and remind me that he wasn't going anywhere and tell me that we are meant to be together. His love always won me over and after nearly 8 years, it was feeling like we'd made it over a big hump and I had finally surrendered fully to the love and all of it’s challenges.


Yet now, even in spite of all of his wanting to leave me hopeful, I need the hope to die so that I may be able to move on fully with my life, with no attachment to “maybe someday” any longer.  No more false illusions of possibilities, no holding on to anything: I need the death of it for my own closure.

I wanted to die in his arms, I still do. Some part of me already has.

Yesterday I got word that a young man had gone for a walk three days ago and never returned. Friends of mine sent a search party and his body was found in the river not so far from my house. No one knows what happened. He went out for a walk and he never came back. Somehow that hit me hard last nite. The impermanence of this life is so easy to forget. Life is too easy to take for granted.

To expect another day is the way we live for the most part. We all know that life can end at any second, but we don’t really experience what that means until someone passes away, or there is some kind of permanent loss. Death feels so final. Through spiritual wisdom, we know that it is only truly a transition to some other realm that we can’t fully grasp. Yet on the physical level that we associate life with most of the time, it is final. It is a full moving from one experience to another and we go alone. 

So why is it that this aloneness bites so much? Some say we are born alone, but truly I don’t see that as true. We are created from two beings coming together in union, then we develop in the body of our mother. We are birthed, held, nurtured, fed, cared for by others. A human baby is so vulnerable and in need of others to care for it. There is truly nothing alone about being born. We come in fully attached, and already in love with our mothers. We are never alone in the beginning or we wouldn’t survive. Life isn’t meant to be lived alone. "No man is an island."   

We don’t get here without help from other beings, we can’t survive here totally alone, and those who do often end up insane or fanatical because it is not human nature to be solitary beings, it simply isn’t. Humans are, and always have been, social animals who are most healthy when they can love others, share, and commune.