I am an only child and that resulted in my childhood being lonely, often (at least from my perspective). If you would ask my parents I am sure they would tell a different tale of a never ending stream of kids at our house all the damn time. But for me, there was never enough, I felt the inherent lack in being one...and that plagued me from that day until this.
And I never knew how much until recently...my life long struggle with one, always present but just outside my consciousness. It appeared that my struggles were with other things, but as advancing age tends to do, all has become clearer lately.
My issue, for the whole of my life, has been and continues to be the problem of One.
I know many people to whom one is great! I know many people satisfied by One. But I am not that person, never have been. I have always wanted MORE! Of whatever it is...partners, friends, money, things...I have been consumed with this idea that whatever I have, more would be better.
Now I know that is simply not true...more isn’t better but so far in this life, I have not been able to really get my interior self to buy completely into this idea that less is more and One is just fine really.
I cannot go back in time and adjust a little girl’s perception of her solitary status and change it into something that is more palatable and accurate. For whatever reasons, I decided long ago that me being alone was a curse and have been forging a war against my solitary state ever since.
I have made horrible partnership decisions. I have picked itinerant friends and called them forever. I have believed the fallacy that I was worth nothing, so I was willing to take anything, even if that was abuse. Attention of any kind was better than being ignored, or alone.
I have healed some parts of this Oneness. I like being alone now. In fact, the more time I spend alone, the more I seem to want it, crave it, demand it. It still feels like a default position. Like I am taking it because I am not chosen by someone else, however that thought is fading because I began turning invitations down, sitting social things out and remaining at a safe distance for my interior to catch up with my exterior.
How to solve the problem of One...
So far in this life, I feel I have made little progress. Hell, I just identified it as the problem moments ago...it came to me last night on an evening stroll with the dog in the meadow, with the long light of fall all around. An almost full moon hanging low in the sky...watching me to see if perhaps now might be the time that I wake up to my own delusion and see, the life I am living illuminated equally by the fading sun and rising moon.
And I did.
I saw that I have battled myself for myself against myself, forever. I was born solitary into this world and so I have felt the whole of my existence, and have tried to remedy that by the addition of others, so many others in all their varied shapes and forms, but last night as I walked the meadow I realized the only time I truly feel peaceful is when I am alone. And perhaps if I would just accept this state as being how it is, then perhaps I could really find peace.
My best lessons in this life have come from subtraction, not addition. When things are added, I do not learn. But when things are removed from me, oh, what I learn! The only exception to this would be my children. They have been the most wonderful additions to my life, at times quite challenging but always, forever a blessing.
So is it possible for me to finally stop fighting the battle of One? To learn to love this solitariness, to accept it and lay down my weapons of addition and multiplication. To just stop trying to change my state from one to many. One is actually quite fine as it turns out...and I can see, at least I think I see, that my whole problem all along is a stubborn refusal to accept this oneness. I am just fine over here alone. Really. And all this time, it was not my aloneness that was the issue, instead it was my insistence that it should be other than how it is...that I should be a union of two or more. Always attempting to add something or someone to change one into more...when I can see now, that One is a very powerful number that stands on her own...always.
And One is not the problem...never has been. Instead, it has been my belief, my insistent and persistent belief that One was something to be fixed or cured or changed...One is actually just fine and perhaps if I just let it be, I would stop all the suffering and get on with all this life living I get to do...
One is not the lonliest number...except when you decide it is.
