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Being alone and feeling alone are two very different things.
I have felt alone in a crowd of thousands.
While I like alone time, I loathe feeling lonely.
I am an emotional creature.
I always have been.
It has been both an amazing and horrible trait to be blessed/cursed with.
I have such difficulty keeping my emotions in check, even when I know logically what I am going through is likely good for me or necessary.
A long, what seems like a total lifetime ago really, I had to break up with a boy. We were so very different, I am not really sure why or how we even came to be, and yet?
We worked.
He was different.
And special.
And despite our differences, I liked him just as he was.
For my part, I loved him to bits.
But like many things, it had to end.
There was no fault, no blame, no anger or destruction. It was a matter of timing, distance and all the other things that life throws in your way.
But I was completely unready to let go.
The last time I heard his voice, it was both good and not so good. And that would be because of my awesome emotional state and lack of ability to control it. It seemed like the more upset at our parting I got, the more frustrated I became at his lack of emotional display.
I mean, we were going to be parted forever, wasn’t I worth a tear or two?!
Geesh!
It hurt and I told him so.
He explained that while he was fond of me and that it hurt that we had to say goodbye, he didn’t have the luxury of losing control of his emotions and because we were separating for non-awful reasons and that we were now both able to take our lives in different directions, it was a positive thing.
It made me feel ashamed of myself and I envied his ability to stay so rational and positive.
Being so emotional can be tough and it hardly seems like a luxury for me.
Because I feel things so intensely, I am capable of taking the smallest and simplest things and squeezing more happiness and joy out of them then most people can feel.
But.
It also means that I am also capable of feeling pain so sharp and hurtful it can, and does, bring me to my knees.
It was telling that there was as much laughter as there were tears (Seriously, those who weren’t there have no idea how full of humor and happy all of us are and can be. This post is way more of a downer than that panel was. I love that about us.) as we talked about the different life events and paths that had led the 5 of to be sitting on that dias together talking about how we had gotten through so many things because of the community that surrounded each of us.
My community.
Do you know how thankful I am for all of you?
I may be in a fight with god but you are all angels and I have been lifted and carried and supported on your wings more than any one person deserves to be.
During the panel I recounted the darkest moment in my life. Sitting in that van, my body being slowly poisoned by the huge bottles of pills I consumed in some warped desire to save everyone from the wreck that was me. I remember watching a solitary bead of condensation that had melted on the windshield because of my body heat, roll down a slow, difficult path. As it worked hard to cut across the frost all by itself I remember thinking how tired I was, how much I felt for a drop of water fighting along an obviously futile path, how surreal it was that it was the last thing I would probably observe in this life…and how terribly, horribly alone I felt.
I don’t talk or write about this often.
It is difficult and embarrassing for me.
(Really, you have no idea how much so.)
Here on this blog I am almost putting the covers over my head wondering what on earth y’all think of me and it and everything, but saying and talking about it in a room of my peers was not easy.
As I recounted and remembered I almost couldn’t go on.
Because along with being a very emotional person, I am also blessed with an acute memory.
All those years later, sitting in a conference room in New York City, I felt the pain of that night cut me.
And I couldn’t speak.
Then I felt a hand, half-curled from the effects of the stroke that almost took her from us all, reach out and take mine in hers for support and to let me know I was loved.
She was there for me to give me strength to get through and go on.
I was not alone.
I am so thankful for the people I have met during my years online.
Most of you don’t comprehend how appreciated and needed you are in my life.
Sometimes late in the melancholy of the night or when I am hit by a wave of grief or loss or memory, I have nowhere else in the world to turn but to you all.
I have cried literal lakes of tears on the keyboard of my computer over the years.
And no matter what time of day or night, no matter what city I am in, no matter what my problem or sorrow is?
Someone is always, ALWAYS there.
To listen, love, hug or just accept me just as I am.
Mama Loves & Looney Tunes (Photo credit: Schmutzie)
My beautiful community.
You all mean so much to me.
You have done so much for my life.
You helped save someone that should have been well beyond saving.
I am grateful for you every day.
Because of you I am never alone.
And I’m here to say in my big, overly emotional way…
I love you.
xo,
Me.
*Because I mentioned this series many times in my panel, I will take pity on the people who immediately started Googling my blog for this story once our session was over and post links to Part One, Part Two, and Part Three here. (Except I take no pity on the ass who Googled, “How did looneytunes try to off herself?” You need a lesson in etiquette, yo.)
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