THE UNSOULMATE

Whenever anyone asks me to describe my writing, I normally include the fact that I am an unsurprisingly good memoirist. It’s the kind of writing that is inflected with human breathiness, the kind you would expect from a person who spends her days needing to pour out the depths of her being by pulling words out of her head in order to make it make sense. Sometimes, I succeed at penning depth and substance however most times, showing you bits and pieces of full frontal me makes me feel weird and panicked, it makes me uncomfortable and I laugh inappropriately at the thought of someone reading my work. I call it secondhand embarrassment.

You see thing is, I am a full time, four-dimensional adult. I have expanded, adapted and evolved through almost two decades now. I have experienced profound things, insightful things and inspiring things. Through it all I have grown and as I am almost certain about what it is makes me happy, I am also certain about what I fear and other than revealing bits and pieces of myself to an audience, I fear being alone. Let me explain.

In some ways, I think we are all slightly fearful of being alone. It gives us a pinching and panicked feeling kinda like trying on a sweater that is tight around the neck in a crowded store. Whether its sitting by ourselves in a moment of complete solitude or just the fear that we wont find people who are made from the same star dust as we are. This fear pervades different aspects of our lives such that sometimes our relationships may be rooted in attachment as opposed to connection. We hang on to people because for the most part, our lives have always been bound up in expectations. We are always trying to be something for someone else. We have different faces for different people and somewhere in the constant battle of being something else, we lose what matters most; our true selves.

The truth is, we feel most alone when we are strangers to ourselves and in an age where everyone is watching, we are more pieces of what they want us to be as opposed to who we really are. The universe will always give us moments of being alone but that does not translate to loneliness. It is in these moments that we are supposed to introduce ourselves to ourselves so that we can introduce that person to someone else. It is in these moments that we ought to battle our demons, come correct with ourselves and understand that our true value is not in being something to someone else but in being our true selves. It is in presenting ourselves to the world knowing full well that we are worthy of love just as we are, no adjustments.

I am learning to find peace in my moments of aloneness. I am learning that sometimes its better to center your life on what’s happening in you as opposed to what’s happening around you. I am learning that it is in the moments when I am not under pressure to be something for someone that I can fully recharge my emotional currency and give it to people who matter most. I am learning that it is in these moments that I can just be a human being and find out what I want independent of what people want. Most importantly, I am still learning to be mine