Sometimes lonliness is a purple blob

Ah, Valentine's day. The single person's day of punishment. As if we're not constantly reminded (see three or four posts ago for a fuller explaination of our reprimand) about how awful and bad it is to be single. There's an entire day devoted to people in love.

Instead of being bitter this year, I'm going to take a lesson from Mrs. Barbara Brodsky. I might even declare tomorrow BB Day. Why? Well, she's freaking smart and connected to some part of the universe that many of us don't wish to acknowledge or don't believe exists. What's interesting about her advice, or the advice that she's asked to pass on, is that it's so perfectly logical. She says that instead of denying that we feel pain, or lonliness or anger, we have to confront those feelings with love. We have to visualize the feelings, understand their role, and let them dissipate.

Something about this reminds me of what I know about AA. After meeting a few AA members and talking to them about their AA experiences, I realized that much of what they do in that group should be common practice. They are allowed to embrace their weaknesses, and ask for forgiveness. They are allowed to acknowledge publicly that they have this terrible part of themselves that leads to self-destruction, and publicly ask for help with that. They make the negative confrontable, and they use love and forgiveness to diffuse that negativity. They don't deny that it's there. Ever. They don't have to, because when they're in the meetings, no one judges, and when they're in public, they're saved by anonymity.

So what would we, the people who's poison is lonliness, do about our affliction? Is there a point where we take refuge in lonliness because it's familiar? Because it's easy? When do we get to stand up and say, hello, my name is ___________ and I'm freaking unbearably lonely. And not lonely because we don't have wonderful people around us as friends or family. But lonely because we're missing that significant other. Lonely because we hope there's one other person out there who can help make this existence slightly less painful.

But let me get back to BB. The thing I really like about BB's philosophies is that they do not allow for the denial of any part of us. The anger, the depression, the self-depricating critic. They're all there. I've been assigning them colors. Anxeity is orange, a seething orange mass that has scribbles around the edges like a supernova threatening to burst. So I think about it, I see it, and I watch it dissipate into a cool blue calm. Anxiety was there, it was present, I accepted it, and let it go. Lonliness is purple, a deep, dark ocean floor purple. It's frosted -- not like the flakes -- more like one of those black ice slicks that meet unfortunate drivers in the middle of winter. Purple gets thawed by a fresh spring green, and wisps away when I can make it.

So that's what I'll be doing tomorrow. Instead of dismissing the holiday, I'll be reclaiming it. Lonliness doesn't have to be bad, and it doesn't have to be destructive. It is one of those things, part of the human experience that just is, no matter who we are, no matter who we're with. I'm not going to fight it anymore.