“Lonely is a freedom that breathes easy and weightless
Lonely is healing if you make it” – Tanya Davis

Beautiful video, music and poetry. Sage advice. Especially for this heavy soul.

It’s 4am, a dream wakes me again. Yes, crying again.

I am in a room, planning some events. One is easy, getting ready, moving along, others are making it happen. The other is heavy, a burden, I am trying to carry the hope and confidence it requires to host. I have a stack of posters, moving into the room where everyone is talking, laughing, carrying on. I am timid, uncertain, verging. On tears. As I seem to always be. I place the posters on a table, and then I feel hands are on my back, supportive, soothing, comforting. This is when I wake. Tears wash over me.

I remember the church youth groups, the college Christian crowds I felt at once comfortable and alien amongst. Support from one hand, judgment from the other. Belonging and rejection.

Church always felt like family, like home.  Of course: I grew up in an itinerant preacher’s family.  Church was home.

Where do I belong now? Who am I now? Atheist. Pantheist. Agnostic. Cynic. Loner. Lonely.

Much comfort from that beautiful video above. And from this one…

Eternal Sunshine is my favorite movie. Always has evoked my grief and love, all at once. The love story told in reverse, watching the memories unravel, tracing the conflict back up to the beginning, where love was fresh and new and spotless. I loved the interview in the “extras” part of the DVD, where director Michel Gondry and Jim Carrey converse about the nature of childhood, how it can be so sad and lonely for many of us.

Bringing those earliest experiences onwards, into adult life. Into relationship. How do they get resolved? How do I find myself again, alone, complete?

How do I move about in my world, confident, outgoing? How do I host every night at the restaurant, entertaining, making guests feel welcome, wanted, loved? So they enjoy their experience. So they come back.

Game face. Holding the lonely. At bay.