Blessed Solitude

It was overcast this morning, the sky kinda drippy. I like it that way, especially when I'm working in the garden. The sun is just brutal most days and it gave me a rare chance to plant some seedlings without them being scorched by noon. My mind was wandering even though I was listening to a podcast and my mood felt a little cloudy. Lately when I fall into these moods, I try to be a grown up and pull myself out of it by centering and asking myself what I am grateful for at that exact moment...what will I look back on as my time here draws to a close and find beautiful and lovely and precious? The very first thing that popped into my head was, "I'm grateful to be alone." That kinda surprised me, even though it was my own thought. It felt selfish and a little psychopathic to be grateful for loneliness. And it reminded me of one of my favorite poems:

MY EYES SO SOFT

Don't
Surrender
Your loneliness so quickly.
Let it cut more
Deep.

Let it ferment and season you
As few human
Or even divine ingredients can.

Something missing in my heart tonight
Has made my eyes so soft,
My voice so
Tender,

My need of God
Absolutely
Clear.

HAFIZ

I realized there in the garden that I really am grateful for all this loneliness and travel and dirty fingernails and food and time with my thoughts. I think back to a few months ago and I felt like I was doubled over with the aloneness and the weight of my own constantly crazy-making brain. I felt like I could barely stand up under the weight of everything and often just collapsed into a big ball of crying and feeling lost. Today I feel like my back is strong and straight. I feel sort of like myself again. I like my loneliness, only now it just feels like blessed solitude, the kind of perfect loneliness that I may never have again in my lifetime. I know how I love and I know that I want to have a partner and that circus of loving and compromising and happiness and anguish will inevitably start all over again sometime soon...and I don't want it to be right now. I am profoundly grateful to have no one but myself to worry over and grapple with. By myself I feel a cool quiet that I don't have with anyone else. This loneliness finally feels like a gift.