FREE-FALLING in QUOTIDIEN

Me: The most difficult thing in my life right now? The loneliness.

Counselor: MJ, it has only been 5 months. I remember how it was at that point in my life, too. But I have successfully chosen to remain single. Even the sexual urges that you speak about now have gone away.

I am horrified at the very thought. The words struck deep into my heart and scattered shards of fear in all directions. My heels dug in, and sheets of tears washed over my cheeks, and down my neck before I could even think enough to make a sound. I felt sentenced.

Counselor: MJ, I’m not saying you won’t find another love....and I’m not saying that another love won’t find you. What I’m saying is that at some point, you may find yourself having to make peace with that possibility, though.

Me: Never. I can’t. I refuse. You don’t understand. You don’t ask a fish out of water to make peace with its useless efforts to breathe. You don’t ask a lioness to make peace with being a vegetarian.

You don’t understand - and it may be that I’m using the wrong word. It is deeper than loneliness. It is more than aloneness. It’s disconnectedness. A being unhinged from true living.... I was created to love hard, and to be loved back just as hard. It is and always has been a part of me. Even from the ashes of my husband’s death arose new self-discoveries that were unexpected, beautiful, awesome, and fearsome: sexuality, sensuality, acknowledgement of a strength I never thought I possessed. I believed these were gifts - promises for some future joy that I would be blessed with for having to deal with such great loss in the now. Beacons of hope off in the distance on this road I must travel.

What you’re saying, right now, sounds like a death knell. You are describing a hell far more frightening than one with the specter of demons, fire and brimstone.

I have already been forced to make peace with the loss of my soul-mate - my companion. I have endeavored to do so with as much grace as I could muster. But do not ask me to do this thing. I can not make peace with the absence of hope - or with a loss that may never be replenished.

Grief counselor: You have to heal this part of you before you can ever hope to move forward. You do not need a man to be whole, and happy.

Me: I know who I am. I know how I was created. I know my worth. I am an awesome creation. I am a complete person. Needing love, needing that symbiotic connection is NOT a sickness. To find it or to be found by it - that love - is the most beautiful blessing, the greatest gift.

I don’t understand.
I don’t understand.
Am I that lost? That out of touch? That unaware of reality that I’m confusing some deep-seated sickness with a thing of beauty - and believing that we are all deserving of it?

I don’t understand.

I don’t understand.