6/18:
You are so used to being self contained. You have spent years on inner work so that you do not have an immediate need to emotionally bleed onto close friends. You no longer consider trauma bonding the root basis of a relationship. Emotional intimacy, yes. Authenticity, yes. But trauma bonding of teens and twenties, showing your emotional wounds to one another, is no longer pressing.
So it surprises you when you reconnect with an old friend, Pan, who is deeply present and deeply open hearted, and you start to share your struggles. You share how you’ve felt like you are torn between one point in your life and the next. How you value your old friends and you seek new communities. How you are still confused by social dynamics in the Pacific Northwest and yet have had such a radically different life outside of this Portland bubble. You share where you feel stuck.
He calls out when something feels rehearsed, not coming from a place of your truth. He hones in on you needing to come from a place of abundance, which seems to have left you the last few weeks.
He’s right, he’s honest. He’s clear. He’s present. He trusts you enough to offer the truths that he sees unveiled and unclouded.
You didn’t realize how much you needed to share all that. You’ve stopped therapy, and journaling and regular calls with friends. All that had been emotional stability for the last couple years. You had stopped because you had felt deeply grounded for months. You’ve undergone the process of discarding and surrendering. You’ve let go of habits, of wants, of needs, of things. You are trying to get down to the root of only what is required.
When he asks your questions you take time to feel into what stirs you inside. This is something you picked up from a friend you had tea with weeks before. And he waits. There wasn’t a question in your mind that he would.
You’ve been torn about this city. When you left during the pandemic you were burnt out trying to cultivate a life that met your needs. Now, that you changed, your needs changed, the city’s changed and your friends changed, you have been slowly leaning into what all that feels like.
You still love this city. You still feel the beauty of its heart. But it is, even before the last few years of apocalypse, bipolar. Those were summers of euphoric revelry in the fairy tale forests filled with laughter and light. Those were the endless gray, cold and wet winters which cued the city wide depression and its accompanying hibernation. You’ve never been so high and satisfied. You’ve never been so cold and alone. They are days of sparkling neon and of deepest pitch.
You know you will be gone by winter.
Now you are entirely free to do as you like. A remote job. Debts paid. All irreplaceable possessions in storage. No dependencies on anyone or anything. No health issues to address. You could literally go anywhere and do anything. And that is so deeply unsettling.
You tell your friend coming back was to face a fear of all the old loss you felt. You tell your friend that you didn’t know how you’d feel in these places, if there was anything left for you.
He questions you. Thank the gods! He actually questions you. No one does that these days, and you’d count yourself lucky if someone even actively listened.
What appears is that the path forward is of abundance. It is not in distracting yourself but taking actions, internal and external, to cultivate an overflowing love in your presence and how you move through the world. And that will flow into all that you do. You’ve tasted this, you know this, you’ve moved down this way. But you had gotten stuck in this city, you were getting lost in the details, you had been choking on your own despair and intellectualization of emotions and needing to think instead of feeling a path forward.
You and he feel the end of this conversation. You set down a burden you didn’t realize you had been carrying. You can simply look into his eyes and smile, nothing more is needed. And you are deeply grateful to have this soul in your life.
All this was happening at a party, a get together, a shindig. It was a little get together in a home, a home filled with plants and woods and crystals. It’s the home of one on their own path and who made so much glorious progress through so much pain. It is an honor to witness. They cultivated a sacred space and invited you and their closest friends into it.
You all shared dinner together. You all became a cuddle pile in the living room. You all shared your hearts and your stories and your worlds.
This is so precious and unique. There is no experience like it and there never will be again. And it’s happened dozens of times. This is home for you in this city and you are glad to be back.