An Island Adrift in the Cold Lonely Sea

Lately I’ve been consumed with feelings, or the absence of feelings as I contemplate the meaning of life. Purpose is only characterized by the mind who has conceived of it. Perceptions amongst us vary despite having the same five senses, physical inceptions, and similar mental capacities. Meaning derived from humans is filtered through thousands of unique lenses impossible to replicate. What the meaning of life means to me may mean something entirely different from your own definition. The only constant I have observed in my observations is the existence of love.

Love initiates us into life. It leads us, teaches us. Even a lack thereof leaves us with certain longings and impressions about loveless spaces. Love is shared, love is illuminating, love is singular in that, it is all that is. Existing within us and outside of us, seen in animals and nature, love is the tie that binds all life.

Even in knowing this enlightening and overwhelming information, I find my mind eerily quiet and my body aching from feeling.

What makes this lovely download from the universe so heavy today is the lack of community I see around me. I value love, loving kindness, more than most anything. However, I often find that I’m giving more than I receive. I recognize that I’m stuck in my ego in this perception, but a part of me asks, “When will I receive the loving kindness I have generated for others?” A selfish part of me whines and cries, screams and rages just needing to be touched by the loving kindness of the world. I know this wound originates from rarely being on the receiving end of loving kindness as a child; if anything, I was the parent - the generator of loving kindness. All of my life feels as though it’s been spent caring for others, using all of my loving kindness up on caretaking everyone but myself. Rarely do I think of it in this way, and rarely do I fall into this ego trap, but I must admit that the truth is that there is still a small part of me that goes without, that begs an answer to the question, “When will it be my turn?”

In what seems like a negating behavior, I rarely accept help. As a trauma survivor I was taught that help was, at best, only something extended to you as a secret loan which was to be paid back at an unspecified time, under unspecified conditions, without my knowledge or agreeance. At worst, it was a way to become abused. Learning to accept help requires a trust that I can rarely cultivate in relationships. I’ve been struggling with all of this because I knew it didn’t all have to do with this traumatic past - something else was holding me back from resolving these heavy feelings today.

After sitting here and writing, I have found that it isn’t just childhood trauma or these epiphanies weighing me down - it’s the fact that I find it difficult to trust anyone or anything that truly impedes me.

Friendships and community are both predicated on the concepts of trust and faith, as is spirituality. I have been both fascinated and devastated by all three. As a child, my family and community let me down. As a teen, God as I knew it let me down. As a young adult, many of my friendships let me down. Keeping in mind that I understand no person is perfect, I experienced an inordinate amount of adversity and abandonment in regards to broken trust and faith throughout my life. Overcoming an instance here or there is one thing, but overcoming decades, lifetimes of this adversity teaches one that trust and faith are unsafe, and within themselves, untrustworthy.

Reconciling the ability to trust and have faith in humanity, or at the very least certain individual humans is difficult, but I’m doing it each day. What becomes difficult on this journey now is not knowing if I can trust, but if I am committed to fully trusting…to showing up in my fullness, showing up in authenticity - even if that means I’m struggling and I need a break, a shoulder to cry on, or a babysitter for my children. What I’ve noticed is that I find this type of trust exceptionally difficult. The reason being is because most people that I know already have support systems, relationships where trust has been established for twenty, thirty years. Most importantly, these people have parents. Parents who loved and supported them, comforted and aided in their moments of hardship. Even in cases where their parents have passed, they know at their core they were genuinely and unconditionally loved. This love is not one that I am sure I have ever known. Even if it has come my way, I’d never have noticed it because becoming too close is too painful, too unsteady. The worst of it all is that I no longer trust in myself because I spent all of my life abandoning my needs, my desires, my hopes, my dreams, my body, and all of myself in order to survive, to make it to today.

Reveling in pity isn’t something I enjoy doing, so these admittances admittedly turn my stomach. Joy and love have not completely escaped me in this life; I’ve had some wondrous, gorgeous moments. Yet, I find myself just today realizing that I’m afraid to come to terms with my own mortality because my brain has been wired to believe that once I accept it, I’ve somehow given up - only conditioned terror could scare a person into believing that acceptance is going to lead to their immediate death, a deep-seated superstition of the traumatized. Understanding how silly it is, I still find it difficult to shake the feeling that surrender, that acceptance, that trust, leaving behind my suspicious hyper-vigilance opens me up to life-threatening danger. How on earth could someone REALLY show up as their authentic, unflawed selves when combatting this type of fear?

In the back of my mind questions swirl, “Would my friends even be open to watching my kids so my husband and I could go on our first date in years? Would they accept me as I am, panicked and imperfect, snippy and PMS? Do they see all of me, or just that goodness they want to hold onto for themselves? Conversely, can I be there for them in the ways I would ask them to be for me?” And then I wonder, “Am I asking too much from people who already know what it means to be loved, to be secure and already have their loving relationships established?”

Community the way our parents and grandparents experienced it is over, and it’s a complete shame. Trust in members of the general American population has been eroded. Everything is so divisive today that almost no community could surmount the depending divide created by our hyper-individualist and capitalist ethos. No neighbors to watch the children play, to bring meals when people are indisposed, to hold block parties for families. No people to have cook outs or to collect litter when the communities are polluted. No one to stand up for the marginalized, the homeless. No one to offer a cot or a hot meal. No one to mentor and shape the next generation in ways their parents are unable. Parents these days are left as islands for their children to inhabit and overrun, unless the grandparents are around. Even that is not enough.

Upon further examination, my own children will be raised without grandparents, family, or close friends nearby (as it stands). Their only community is whatever their father and I create. They adore their school friends, their teachers, and us. But at the end of the day, I have no one to call if my family gets ill. No one to reach out to when my husband goes to the hospital for procedures. No one to call for a mental break from the stringent demands of motherhood. Moving doesn't solve the crisis either, as many would suggest, if there's no support system to move back too. Quite literally whatever I and my husband and my kids create is all that we have. So far, north easterners have been much more honest and true in their relationships, so opportunities exist. To be clear, I’m not only asking to receive - I want to give: to contribute to people, to communities, to nature - to everything bigger than me, to the circle of life and love. Just when I think I’ve found an opportunity, it slips through my fingers. And still, I persist. Still I want to believe that somewhere out there are people meant for us. Maybe those people are already in my life. Maybe because I’m to afraid to ask for help, to ask for more, I have doomed myself to isolation.

I know that all mothers who have stayed at home with their children and end up in an empty home end up contemplating this very issue. I suppose the problem is that I am thirty-four and most women are in their forties and fifties when this stage of life approaches. Their husbands are home more often, and they spend more time with people they’ve established relationships with in childhood. They’re typically more financially stable and secure in themselves as parents.

It’s been over four months since I’ve written anything. I knew it was indicative of something, of what I am still unsure. Unprocessed grief? Spiritual upheaval? The cold lonliness of winter? Maybe none of those. Maybe all of those.

Today, I am going to be honest with you, to share truth - I am struggling. Struggling to get by. Struggling to give my children enough, because I can barely give myself enough. Struggling to show up authentically when I am experiencing a hardship or an unmet need. Struggling to not feel as an insignificant island adrift in the dark, lonely cold sea.

NOTE: This is NOT a cry for help or a suicide note or even an article to solicit empathy, sympathy, or pity. It’s just what my journey is today, and what I felt like sharing with all of you.