A Voice of One's Own

Being With Oneself.

I recently reread he’s just not that into you. While talking about it, a woman said to me: you start to wonder if you could ever be as happy with someone as you are without.

This comment shocked me. We’re so taught that we should want someone that at first I was saddened, but then I thought more and more and realized I was jealous. Jealous of her independence, jealous of her self-love, jealous of her badass confidence. So jealous that for weeks I was replaying this comment in my head until I realized: I feel similarly. Maybe not every moment of every day and maybe not as confidently, but I am way into being by myself and with myself. I am way into myself. Unapologetically, I am into loneliness. 

Why, you ask? Well, if I look back on my life and the times I felt most alone, there I find that I grew the most, that I learned the most. You may have noticed that I have frequently written about holding myself, healing myself, embracing myself in the darkest of spaces. It all started when my dearest friend, P, gave me SARK’s book, Succulent, Wild Woman. SARK writes about taking a flashlight into her darkest spaces, exploring them, knowing them, and learning to hold herself right there in her authentic darkness. When I read this in July, I was intimidated. I wasn’t ready to explore those spaces let alone hold myself there. But over the course of the months since then, I have been doing some serious exploration! Some serious acceptance! Some serious holding! Some serious healing! And I have come out feeling stronger, more liberated, more empowered, more confident, more independent than ever before.  So much so that I don’t really know that I want to let anyone get too close right now. Some people in my life are bothered (or even horrified) when I say this, but a conversation with one woman really affirmed my feelings. She said that it is when we are totally independent and in love with ourselves and with loneliness that we can healthily share ourselves with others without becoming dependent on or consumed by another. I want to consume my own life, I want to fly free, I want to reach into my own wounds, explore them, learn to love them, heal them, and hold them. I don’t want to let anyone take that from me, but maybe one day, once I do, I’ll share it with someone; we’ll see. ;) 

On that note, I wanted to share the poem above, which speaks to exactly what I’m talking about.

Enjoy, mt