LONELINESS

 During meditation this morning I stumbled upon perhaps the biggest issue to of come out of me thus far; loneliness. Until now I had never really given it much consideration, but with the advent of recently leaving my last job, I am perhaps able to now see that one of the main reasons that I went back to work was my loneliness. It is this tremendous issue that has caused such considerable discomfort to me over the years, that I need to be aware of what it has done in it`s wake, then let it go.

 As I begin to think about my loneliness I find myself reflecting upon how long it has been since I was in sensitive company of any depth. How long it has been since I have held another person, or even been held. There has been nobody in my life, or my bed for so long. I literally ache for companionship now. How could I of been so unaware of such fundamental issues ? I still could not see it when I begun getting to know my beautiful cousin & her daughters after not talking to any of my family, not out of anger, but a lack of interest. Never did I bother with her, or any of my family. I can see why; because I was trying to damned hard not to be vulnerable, but this has turned me into robot, someone who was unavailable, & detached. A narcissist through fear, & loneliness. It is this issue that has kept me from being open & confident. All that I have been doing is projecting this major issue onto other things, like work, parents, losing my brother, & the like. I guess all things of such fundamental importance could be seen to have it`s roots in unenlightened parenting, but I think this would be missing the point somewhat. My recent soiree onto a certain spiritual path, away from my Buddhism, has just been a diversion to take me away from the longing to reach out & be a part of something that involves other people. Anywhere there was other people I would find myself being attracted to, sometimes just a walk around Soho, or going along to meeting of something or other. I have always done this. It is easy to see now just how dangerous things became with this problem a couple of years ago. I would wander around aimlessly all through the week looking for a role, something to do, somewhere to fit in. Answers. When others were getting on with building a career, a life, children, I was seeking relief of my pain. It was terrible, so depressing, always loneliness, keeping it at bay, running from it, yet it walked alongside me like a shadow, reminding me just how close it always was. Continuously compounding my self-hatred, bringing up other issues around my lack of confidence & being unable to connect with others. Always too frightened to confront the issue.

 Looking back on this terrible period, it is easy to see just how painfully lonely I was, but perhaps being without regular employment, a role, made it worse ? It was also at this time that I made a decision to break off communicating with my father. All this happening at the same time I think broke me down under the weight of it all. Once I was outdoors, an hour later, I would need to get home immediately. The only way I could survive outside was too pretend to be someone else, another man. Needless to say these feelings would not allow any let up, they were relentless. Neither would they allow me the pleasure of refuge in a woman or friend. I suffered alone, extremely alone. Nobody came, except my mother, but this was always conditional. It may be interesting to reflect here that I was born alone.

 My father told my mother not too worry & that he would be there, at the hospital the moment I was born. He dropped her off at the gates while she going into labour & left her there. The man did not return until later that same evening, after all the action was over. It would seem that our fates were set, that I could never enjoy a man of such pitiful quality. What type of a man does such a thing ? Then, just too really insult my mother & I, he did it again two years later, when my late brother was born. Since this madness I have unwittingly found myself chasing weak, unavailable women all my life, the same type as my mother, then wondering why I have no luck with the opposite sex, we do not get on because we are incompatible. KIt is not a question of luck at all. Male friends, & colleagues, I found for a while, would give absolutely nothing, or worse, as happened recently, would cause me serious problems by undermining my integrity. My father could not give any emotional support, or love. All he could ever manage was a kind of bastardised form of narcissistic role play & a few jokes here & there. If I needed him he was simply not there, neither physically, nor mentally. If he read this he would become uncooperative, irritated & see me as a fool who does not live in the real world. He may even throw something against the wall. Through all of this though, & what I have uncovered today, it is important to comment here, that it is so worthwhile to pay a compliment to another, or send an email of kindness to a friend, to just reach out to someone & be real. It really does not hurt. The most important thing here is that if you want too it usually means that that other person would really like you to do it, but cannot ask. Why ? because they too are suffering from loneliness, or insecurity. Of course, one must always be aware of another persons boundaries, but not to the point where one is living so isolated & alone that they are becoming ill. When this happens we become anaesthetised to our human feelings. Try not to let this happen to you, I did & it is a sure killer of vitality.

  It is interesting understanding this issue because it enables me to see with clarity now, & put to bed  behaviour that has been the sole contributor to why I have been depressed in my life. I did get it under control in the older days with diet & knowledge, but this is a big one. Knowing that it has been associated with feelings of abandonment & loneliness due to a lack of a quality, & consistent, fatherly presence during my life, has come as a massive revelation, that should hopefully continue to reveal aspects of my true personality. I have always sensed that this was the case, but could never get to the bottom of it as I was not able to give up the anger & the projections. I needed to, at that stage, still blame people for my illness. I have projected all my frustrations onto my parents & not faced up to my loneliness, & confronted it, asking it why I needed to hang onto it for so long. I do feel though it is safe to say that this issue has been caused by  my fathers negligence of me whilst I was young, & then as I became older. But it does take personal responsibility to leave the anger towards him alone. It is an issue that has always been there, all the way through my childhood, right up until today. I remember it as a child, becoming terrified that I may face being abandoned by him & left alone. Only a recently a dream spoke to me of this fear that I have always had; I am speeding along a highway, knowing that I will always ultimately be alone, in the sun & in the USA, while I cried about this loneliness, saying" I dont want to be alone", hoping someone would come. Yet, knowing that they wont. As I awoke I knew that this was the cause of my fear & whether I liked it or not, I was alone in this world. Yet, there was nothing to be afraid of. I think that only our reaction to abandonment should be what we fear. It is this that can push us into destructive patterns of behaviour that will convince us that it is far better for us to do things that go against congruency. This keeps us away from self-improvement, & it ios this that the loneliness wants from us. It is indeed a silent killer. My recent frightening headache was exactly thaty. An old, old wound coming back from the depths to scream migraine. This was an indicator, showing me that the endings, including the recent job I gave up, were actually old feelings of loneliness & abandonment trying to get me to realise that if I hang onto destructive, worn out situations they will keep me from believing in correct, valued choice that do bring about self-improvement, such as relationships, work, & love. All signs of maturity & progression.

 Being born, then experiencing the immense terror of coming out of the womb ( which I have written about in earlier blogs) & not being received by my father, at the most integral part of my life, has left me isolated & inferior. The lack of masculine support throughout my life has led me to feel emasculated & insecure. Due to this I have always felt as though I have been trying to look for something that I could not have. What is it ? A quality, substantial partnerships & career is what it is. Freud spoke highly, throughout his career, of such substance, warranting these two dynamics as the sole proprietor of the foundations of quality of life. This lack of such substance has left me craving them driving me onto a pilgrimage of sorts trying to locate where my real father is. Although something tells me that he is probably internal. Robert Bly, in his seminal work, Iron John, talks of the coming of a second father, a man who represents the gold in the son. A man of importance that acts as the sons true father & protectorate. I guess this can be a position of work somewhere, or a partners father, a friend even, that type of thing, although these still warrant the term father figure, so perhaps it is really more important to find it internally & have done with it, than to live with the attachment of an person ?

  All this has left me feeling as though I have been functioning on the peripherals of society. I am proud that I have been able to dedicate a large amount of my lifetime to dealing with such fundamental issues, but it is the right time now to begin the process of returning to the world again. Equally important it is to begin relating to a woman, understanding the feminine in all its glory, &, of course, returning to a career. My life will be satisfying once again, as long as I am able to continue maintaining a good emotional state, keeping it clean will become extremely important. The way that I look, communicate, sound, all now show the signs of maturity. I can see the Jungian adage presenting itself too me, of the fool who goes & gets lost in the woods, has to embark upon the path to find his way out, his way home. This unwittingly turns into a transformation to find his maturity, & masculinity. He eventually returns home a hero, like, I guess, a Roman legion, who has proven himself in the years long battle  that took place while his sister wept for him, thinking that she would never see him again. He returns home a man having achieved all his trials. He wears the medals, & the scars, to prove himself to all, including of course, his suitors. This is how I feel now, finding out about my fathers neglect, & inability to provide me with enough substance of what was needed, has done to me, where it has left me. Now I have made this much progress I feel that I can return to the fray, like the hero. Perhaps now I will be rewarded by the feminine, & then my beloved career ?

 Once an issue has been unearthed & then rooted out, it will quickly dissolve & allow the sore, where it has been incubating for so long, to heal. This then allows in a healthy space that will naturally fill itself with a beautiful strong dynamic growing into the opposite of what has been there for so long; maturity & self-respect will take it`s place almost immediately. What then happens is that people of the same quality will begin entering my life & wanting to communicate with the masculine quality that has been unearthed. Because this is what it is, that growth that I am talking about, masculinity. Masculinity is the father that I have craved, & it is exactly that which is growing in the space where my lack, & feelings of abandonment, have sat all my life. People have seen this loneliness in me. Some have wanted to stay away, some have wanted to get closer to me. Yet my mother, of all people, seems to stay away. It maybe that it is too raw, too honest  for her ? Maybe it is the masculine that she has also stayed away from all her life ?

  Many many people want to stay in denial. The great privilege to being alive is to discover ones autonomy. When one dose there is no fanfare, no fireworks, just a knowing, a quiet solid feeling of maturity that sits quietly inside somewhere near the bottom of the stomach. There is little else that is as important as this when it comes to embracing authenticity. This is why I have pushed so many away over the years, I have not wanted, nor been able, to allow myself to the beauty of relating to others or enjoying the depth of another. You see, what is of the utmost importance too me now is my autonomy. There is simply nothing else that I want from my life at the moment. One could say that I am worshipping it like a god, but then so be it. Until this resonates within me I cannot feel comfortable or relaxed, or dedicate my life to anything other than finding it.  My career, & love life will be by-products of it. So everything that I have been through so far has been about refining me for a career & a happy relationship. Of course, once I have accomplished this achievement there will be something else, but until then my career will have to be worked through to closure. It is a process of synchronicity that is happening to allow me to see my transformation taking place. A slow percolating process of the highest order, attracting in all it needs to bring about the changes I so desire. The most recent big one was returning to the workplace, seeing how much I was liked there, how much I was able to learn & grow whilst there, & then turn my flat around into a home that I am proud to live in, have been great signs to show me of the fine process of self-improvement that is taking place. Knowing when to leave was also a very important point that should be included here, for this is a sign of self-respect.

Since I have been able to see my loneliness with such clarity I am now able to understand the many revelations that are now making themselves known. I have mentioned so many of them that I will not bore you any longer by repeating them again, but perhaps an analogy may be appropriate here; it is like a dark pool of oily water, lying at the bottom of some long forgotten ravine, waiting to be claimed, so that it can be cleaned up, refined & brought back to life for all to enjoy again. This sums up exactly how I feel now about how I have let go of the pain of abandonment & the destructive, hopelessness that came from needing my father, a man that now is no longer a part of my life.

 Loneliness kills people. It drives people to take their own life, & locks some into a life of degradation. It maintains depressions, & negative habitual behaviour that in turn keeps alive self-fulfilling prophecies. It drives people to step onto paths that perhaps they would not had to had they not felt so lonely. It`s also a quiet, fearful emotion that stops people from seeing, or even noticing what is happening to them. Quietly robbing them of their life, maintaining the status quo, keeping them without full optimism & vitality. The symptoms are far-reaching, to the point where they will, if not stopped, rob you of your life altogether. I know all these symptoms well, I suffered from them all. The only way that I could of realised such depth in me was through meditation. And this is the sole reason that I began to meditate. It was this process of quiet contemplation that finally helped me capture the culprit that stopped me from fully functioning & put an end to this far from satisfying life, this degradation. Meditation helped me unravel layers of stuff & begin to see the gold that lay underneath. Things like spending too much money on a record, or a piece of furniture. I thought these were important, but they are not, this is just moralising, a fear of being real, of having the things that we want. Having the things that we want. Give of yourself freely & you will be repaid tenfold.

 Right now I am not too sure if there is anything else to report on this epiphany of the highest order. Although, I can say to you though that I do feel extremely gentle at the moment, quiet, yet also feeling a deep respect for myself. It is as though I have come across this long buried terror within me & grabbed it, carried it out into the sun, & let it die. I am shocked that I have allowed myself to be so damaged by it. All the projections that have come from my ignorance of it is shocking. Peacefulness is what I am experiencing now. Perhaps the ringing in my ears that`s been around recently is just another sub-conscious desire to stop myself feeling alone. Better to harm oneself with ringing ears, then get to the bottom of the truth. Another little illness trying to point me in the right direction, which would of been easier to track down, rather than all this, but that is the nature of my spirit. To rather have an annoying babel, then sort out a fundamental root problem. A confusing noise can sometimes be better than nothing. A quote by Janis Joplin that has always stuck with me, perhaps can go way further than I in explaining what this terrible affliction does to people; -" I make love to 25,000 people every night & go home alone". That statement has been stuck in my consciousness since I was 15 years old, & it still makes me shiver whenever I think about it. The pressure that loneliness has put upon me as I have grown up is insurmountable, & is summed up magnificently by that statement.

 It will take time to adjust to being without this horrific childhood terror. I cannot even begin to think about what life will be like without it. But, I am now holding so much excitement thinking about my future, at last, & what life will be like without it. It is so dreadfully sad that I have been to the pits of despair & close to death, just because I was so lonely. Just meandering around, trying to get on with life, looking in all the wrong places for the answers, experiencing abandonment, has brought so much despair & fear. Then one day I realised that this problem, that has been with me right from the start, was loneliness, stemming from the pain of my abandonment.

 I will just have to allow this whole thing to percolate & filter through me now & see what happens.

 I`ll keep you up to date, if you would like me too ?

Thanks for reading my blog, but more so for being available right now to be able to share this most important time with me. I am so grateful that you are here with me today. The fact that you have read this at all, & at this time, tells me about the quality of person that you are.

 Bless you