alone at last

As Wednesday wore long, he began to realize that the intensity and fury of his pain was bigger than the relationship that was ending. He had spent his entire life in dread of and aversion to being alone. He had always pursued love to hide from loneliness. Ironically, he had endured a hell of isolation for the last seven years of his marriage in sheer terror of being alone. He had always believed that he must engage Herculean strength to avoid loneliness at any cost. Now, for the first time, he saw that he did not know what love was. All he knew was the sense of relief and comfort he felt when a relationship was present to shield him from loneliness. All the warmth and tenderness and care he brought to a relationship were driven to this end.

He could not envision being without an intimate partner and happy at the same time. The two things seemed mutually exclusive, and in fact, always had been in his experience. He now saw that he had a gaping void in his heart, and that he had always relied on his partner to fill it in. He knew that somehow, he must heal and restore this damage in order to realize wholeness and love. Otherwise, he would continue to smother and engulf new partners with his need. He felt remorse and sorrow now for the relationships of his life, each of which had eventually succumbed to the inevitable collapse.

So now he turned to look within his heart. What was this horror of being alone? How deep did it go? Where were its roots? What must be done to heal it? Would the resulting wholeness be good enough? Could he trust it? As he pondered all these questions, he realized that he harbored a deep black fear that he could not at first articulate. He realized that this fear had pushed up and driven all the intensity of his turmoil since Sunday, but that he still had not faced it head-on. As he began to see this, his skin tingled and he grew cold. He was beginning to understand the place of physical sensations in deep emotional release, and so he accepted these sensations as markers for the movement of this deep dread closer to the surface of his feeling. He knew that it was the key to his loneliness, and he knew that it ran as deep and as far back as his life on Earth. Having tapped its energy this week, he knew that it was accessible. He knew that the door had opened, and that he dared not close it until the dark thing had been met face to face.

Thursday was a day of relative calm and reflection. The waves of emotion were smaller and further apart. He was now focused on his black, unspoken fear, and its connection to his current lost love. As the day passed, he began to see it clearly, and to understand why this loss was so devastating.

He had not worked for this relationship. It had come full blown with their first meeting. For the first time in his life, he was loved simply and clearly and without reservation or stipulation, and without any effort on his part to draw the love to him. He had trusted this love to be true, and knew even now, in the wreckage of its fulfillment, that it was. He had opened himself fully to it and laid down all of his defenses. And so, when she had made her fateful and inevitable decision to protect her heart from engulfment, he was hit full force with all the intensity and horror of his deepest fear—that he could never be loved freely and fully and without strings or controls. He had never challenged this fear before. He had always kept up his defenses. He had never entrusted himself to anyone, but had rather pressed for companionship as a close substitute.

Now he was alone at last with his loneliness. Now he was faced with the possibility that unconditional and nurturing love was not possible to sustain—that to be loved, he must scrap and fight to be worthy and to draw it to him, and that collapse was inevitable in any case. The collapse of this precious love had shaken his hope to its very core. It might very well be that the desire of his heart simply did not exist. This was the dark fear that had pressed up from his deepest being—that he was doomed to hunger and strive forever for a love that was impossible to sustain.

Now he had seen the black fear, and had given it a name. But he was certain that he had not slain it nor tamed it. He knew that he had just begun to meet this fear. He knew there was still work to come, and he didn’t know how to proceed. More importantly, he didn’t know the answer to the questions the fear raised. What is love? Can it be sustained freely and openly and honestly? Was he capable of it? Would anyone ever be fully present to him to give and receive it freely? He simply did not know. He was hopeful but unsure, shaken in his current experience.

As he pondered all of this, he began to sense a shift. He had always been urgent to fill his experience with intimate companionship. Even as he had seen this relationship crumbling around him he had desperately grasped at the possibilities for finding something to replace it soon. He simply could not bear the loneliness. But now, a change was happening. He did not feel loneliness. He was repulsed by the urgency he had always felt in the past. He must not engage anyone in intimate companionship until he had wrestled through his great dark fear. He felt a new peace and strength to go on—to wrestle the monster alone—to learn his place in the world—to be free. If the outcome of this shift eventually blossomed in love and intimacy with another, so be it. But he would not rush about seeking the numbing drug of intimate companionship in the mean time. He had a mission—a calling—he would be clear and strong and free.