Transition & Attachment

I used to acknowledge the unique moments of parting. I would sing the same melancholy song as I walked through a home I was about to leave. I would take time to acknowledge all the special memories contained in an item I was donating. I would sit and stare out over a vista thinking about who I had been the first time I saw it and everything in me and the world around me that had since shifted. Perhaps I have been through so many partings that they are becoming less notable. Or perhaps I am losing my stamina, losing the will to take time to feel the deluge of change that has been sweeping through my life. Now as I sell off and pack up my home one piece at a time, it all feels and practical. I won’t have space for a bamboo breakfast table in my vision of renting a room in a shared house. I don’t want to ask my friends to carry or store that recliner festooned with kitty hair and scratch marks. And I haven’t played my viola in years.

Then I sold my orchid on a whim, the one that was gifted to me when I left my job at the hospital and that waited to bloom again until I moved into this apartment, and I suddenly felt the loss inherent in this process of embracing my freedom. These items are things, yes, and this world is full of things that are fully replaceable for a few dollars, but because they have shared my life with me they have come to vibrate with my life force. I had a triumphant first breakfast at that bamboo table, pulled up a pair of chairs to share euphoric treats with my last lover, lost myself at it in hours of soothing math puzzles, and wept over it nights nursing sickness and a broken heart. I warmed my feet on the radiator sitting in that recliner in my very first apartment in Portland, cuddled my beloved kitties in it for years, and stayed up late nights in its arms absorbed in novels and deep meditations. And that viola, my reward for practicing every day for a year, still catches my breath with every glimpse of her smooth, deep auburn sheen.

Even this apartment has come alive through my relationship with it, and I feel moments of disorientation and subtle panic over being alone, quiet and fully present in a home my spirit has already left. I am afraid of feeling the grief of acknowledging our bond and afraid of latching back onto its comforts and abandoning my dream. These walls embraced me as though they were the arms of a lover I tumbled into when catapulted from my marriage. These books and wall hangings and statuettes and dishes have filled me with reminders of who I am and breathed me back to life in the silence. I have sought comfort here nearly every day for three years – longer than I have been anywhere outside of my childhood home and the house I shared during my marriage. I have been healed here, but I do not yet know how it will be to face difficulties out in the world without it.

What girds me is knowing that the time has come to fold up this nest and take inside of me the essence of what it represents. And I am so grateful to know that I have fulfilled my deepest wish of leaving it to pursue a deeper love and not out of heart-breaking obligation. As much as this home and all the things inside of it have comforted me, I am experiencing the merciful gentleness of choosing what to release to a new life. The viola, the recliner, and the table all in their own ways represent times that held more suffering than genuine joy, and I no longer need reminders of those comforts found in solitary moments of darkness. But my drum, the exuberant time when I bought her and the excitement when I played her and the way she perches so beautifully among the other things I love most, represents something sacred in myself that I will want to bathe in when I am ready to nest again.

Home. How ironic it is to be embracing a nomad’s life when my most enduring dream remains one of love and belonging and spirited exchange with trusted allies. This vision of solo travel has always been a secondary one, one of freedom and adventure that consoles my spirit when I fear I will lose what matters most. If someone could wave a magic wand and take me back to a warm summer afternoon, relaxing on my back porch after a morning’s labor in the garden, watching the hummingbirds play under the sprinkler spray and the cats lounging in the shade, reading a fascinating book and day dreaming about joining friends for drinks in the evening shade with Andy’s arm around my waist, I would abandon this dream of travel in an instant. I would lay to rest the Tuscan hills, the milking cows, the scenic train rides, the inspiring conversations. All of it. But I would rather be alone and wild than alone and stifled. And I realize that the home that more closely resembles my dream cannot fill a space already occupied by a compromise.

My clarity about the sort of home, people, and activities I need in order to thrive is perhaps the most vital thing I have learned over these past three years. I built this life in layers of nourishment that redirected my tendency to latch onto other people – lovers, friends, co-workers, bosses, spiritual leaders – for security and inspiration. Now the effort required by the severity of this transition – the final packing, parting from my friends and family, and navigating a whole new world with my own inner resources – is inviting me to take this life inside and put it to the test. At times I have felt tremendously tempted by the offer of a comforting pair of arms and bright eyes in a beautiful face, but as I have encountered handsome and enthusiastic men inspired by my journey, my fascination with them has been fleeting. Marc Lewis helped me understand that to truly change, I needed to understand that the things I crave symbolize my deeper needs and to find more reliable ways to meet them.

Over the past few months I have had a series of dreams of powerful wild animals who approach me in the wilderness in a way that is initially terrifying, but I soon realize that there is an inviting gentleness to them, that their reserved ferocity can protect me, and that in our bond, I am also a guardian to them. As I sought to understand what the men in my life have represented, I realized that when facing the wild out in the world, whether through travel or through romance, I feel a fear of being devoured, as well as an intoxicating sense of invincibility. I have a responsibility to steward this energy that moves around and through me, for like the earth itself, neither of us are infinite. These dreams and these longings are an invitation to enter into conscious relationship with my deepest, most untamed parts. If I encounter difficulty and seek solace in someone’s approval or in their arms, instead of trusting myself, what I am most vulnerable to losing is my bond with my most essential self. And so as I begin to take down my artwork from the walls and pack up my dishes, and the panic rises to see this home go bare and empty, I breathe, I stretch, I remind myself this too will pass, and I marvel at this person I have come to be – so brave and so full of faith.

My counselor introduced me to the idea of having an inner locus of control; of being, as I imagine it, a maypole in a hurricane. My ribbons are trashed about by the howling of the world around me, but there is something inside me, powerful in its serene certainty, that does not shift. I know that I can pull comfort up through the ground, pass grief to the heart of the world, and open my mind to universal sources of inspiration. My counselor showed support for my travel plans because, for the first time since we began working together, when I began to talk about the men in my life, it was clear that I am no longer latching on. I understand that they, and this home I have built and filled with things I love, symbolize fulfillment of a longing for something much deeper and more precious, something that will protect me not through my force of will, but through my clarity about who I am and what matters to me. I take my home with me. Between the expanse of sky and abundance of earth, there is an endless space of awe and generosity. And anything that comes between me and that truth, regardless of how sweet it seems, is not for me.

Nancy

“Instead of tying yourself to the mast to resist the Siren’s song, you must recognize the Sirens as harbingers of death, and their songs as background noise.” – Marc Lewis