Loneliness
In the weeks leading up to “the separation day”, I would cry to my sister over the phone and tell her that I was “so fucking lonely” even though Will, our boys, my friends, and she were there for me. I was lonely; it was the first time I’d realized it, and I wondered how I could be so lonely amidst so many people.
I was looking outward for the cause of my loneliness, just as I looked outward, to other people, for a solution to end it. Isn’t that what we’re told to do when we’re depressed and lonely? Volunteer, make friends, … fill your life full of activities and responsibilities to be happy. But that’s bullshit. Those good deeds, the other people, the outward motions, they merely distract from the loneliness. They don’t erase it.
When I drew this picture, I didn’t know that the blackness inside of me was loneliness. I thought it was a flaw within me; that if I could find the source of the flaw, then the blackness would disappear. I was searching the blackness with a flashlight, but looking for the wrong objects. What the flashlight revealed was a great emptiness. A vast, tightly compacted, black hole. Nothing else.
But I missed the blackness because I was looking for THE FLAW.
Realizing I was lonely when I was still with Will was more painful in many ways than the loneliness I now feel. I brought that pain on myself because I EXPECTED him to “make me” not lonely. I thought that if I reached out hard enough, long enough, that he would eventually connect with me, ease my pain.
Expecting him to “make me” feel something caused the flurry of side emotions. Every time he didn’t do as I expected, I felt betrayed, hurt, unloved, crushed…those emotions distracted me from the truth and any possible solutions.
Loneliness is realizing there is a black emptiness within myself. Loneliness is the place where I do not allow the light.
I chose to keep this black hole inside me because searching the blackness with a tiny flashlight is scary; finding NOTHING when I hoped to find THE SOURCE is actually terrifying. (Kind of like in horror movies when the flashlight is darting from corner to corner – you don’t want the heroine to find the monster, but when she does see it then there is a sweet release. At least now she knows from which direction to fight or run.)
But I am changing course. I’m not going to search that blackness with a tiny light. I’m going to flood it with light.
If my loneliness is like a black hole, a dead star, then in time, it will explode outward from the force of its own compaction. When it explodes, it will form a new universe, a new beginning. All new. All me, but re-formed and rejuvenated.
I am unaware of when my black hole’s lifespan will evolve. What is the moment before the explosion going to feel like? Will I notice when it happens? Will I feel the Big Bang?
Is it possible that an infusion of intensive LIGHT, which is both nothing and everything on which our world depends, could hasten a black hole’s end? Is LIGHT the catalyst for the Big Bang?
I am going to concentrate on pushing light into the vast emptiness within me. Whenever I feel the rumblings of discomfort in my gut, I am going to imagine real love as a light source and PUSH that light into that dark space. I am not looking for anything. I know there is nothing there to see because it is too densely compacted to see anything right now. But after the explosion, ALL will come into the light; I will KNOW what I’ve created. And once I know, then I can either do something about it or leave it alone to see how it develops on its own.
I will have a new universe inside of me. A new universe to tend to, love and cherish. I can enjoy it and cease to rely on the external world for manufactured and temporary joy.
Take in the light, black hole. Your lifespan is at its end.
“…Stephen Hawking thinks that once matter falls into a black hole and reaches the Singularity, this Singularity at the quantum scale may actually become a gateway or a spawning ground for a new universe which would exist in some adjacent set of spacetime dimensions. Black holes formed in our universe, according to Lee Smolin, may actually spawn universes beyond our own.” - Ask the Astronomer
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May 30th, 2010 at 1:29 PM
Ive felt that black hole. For me it is the gaping nothing that is where my dreams for a happy home and family were. It threatens to suck away my present joy. First I started to hate the collapse dream, deny that I need or want it anymore. But now I know it is a space that can be filled, but maybe just not the way i hoped. I think when you know the star that collapsed making the black hole, you start to undertand its properties and its gravity. Then you can keep the boundaries needed to prevent it from sucking you in. There is a place where we merge with the divine and there we know that we are never alone and the warmth can fill us. Until we can stay there forever, it is an existential crisis we all face.
June 1st, 2010 at 3:38 PM
Your post reminds me of how I felt during the first year of my divorce. I can relate to your black hole analogy. You will find that you are your own constellation.
Hang in there.