I’ve seen a lot of articles and posts in the last week that describe the grieving that we are experiencing during this time of isolation and physical distancing. We are grieving the life we had, losses we’ve experienced, the life we thought we would have, and the uncertainty of the future. I also find that as time goes on and the novelty of extra time on our hands wears off, we are faced with our Self.
When we are faced with our Self, it means we are faced with some of those uncomfortable bits about ourselves that we generally avoid. You may find that you are easily irritable. You may wonder about those friends or exes that you don’t speak with anymore. The negative voice in your head suddenly turns the volume up, as your negative self-talk increases. You may turn around and realize that all that emotional shit you’ve been avoiding is trailing right behind you.
I found all of the emotional garbage I had shoved away a few months back towering over me this past week. This was my first weekend truly isolating and even as an introvert, I found it to be a challenge.
I was burned out from another week of constant COVID-19 talk. When Friday rolled around and I was just at home with nothing specific to do… I felt at a loss. I felt bored and distracted all at the same time. In the end, I did a lot of sitting in silence. By Saturday afternoon, the bubbling up of all those avoided and undealt with emotions started.
I dealt with a hard blow a few months back and I unintentionally just didn’t emotionally process it. Any time I tried to sit with the feelings of loss, my eyes would be as dry as our beautiful Sonoran Desert. That changed on Saturday when I was flooded with feelings of grief.
I didn’t just lean into it, I nosedived into the deep end and it was fucking fantastic.
I watched a sad movie, I played all the emo albums I have on vinyl because that music just hits different on a record player, I journaled, I meditated, and I was vulnerable with friends about how I felt. Most importantly, I allowed myself to cry, cry, and cry some more. It was such a wonderfully cathartic night.
To face all the icky parts about myself and about that situation was such a healing experience. I woke up the next day feeling cheerful and lighter.
I’m sure that as the weeks roll by, I will face some other uncomfortable truths that I may have been dismissing. And being the psych nerd that I am, I love confronting that shit and am looking forward to the process.
In this next month (and possibly more), we are going to find ourselves learning about our capacity to be alone. I believe this will even be the case for those who are isolated with others.
We can choose to take this as an opportunity to learn about ourselves – the shit that is really getting triggered when our partner breathes too loudly, the beliefs we really hold about ourselves when we are left without distractions, what’s really important to us, etc.
Will you choose to embrace this journey into the Self and use this time as a mirror to learn from? Or will you resist the growth that can come from this pain and time of difficulty?
I’m ready for the journey and look forward to those bumps along the way.
“The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. It may look paradoxical to you, but it’s not. It is an existential truth: only those people who are capable of being alone are capable of love, of sharing, of going into the deepest core of another person–without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the other, without reducing the other to a thing, and without becoming addicted to the other. They allow the other absolute freedom, because they know that if the other leaves, they will be as happy as they are now. Their happiness cannot be taken by the other, because it is not given by the other.”
Osho
