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"Nobody will ever love you as much as I do"

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Hopalong:

--- Quote ---Doesn't the non-fixability of these relationships put a person into perpetual and continual and everlasting grief that will not resolve?
--- End quote ---

Oh, Boat. I understand this question. From my heart cells.

A friend of mine who has been homeless is in a major crisis (to update on another thread)...and his sister wrote that a woman she knows who directs a program said that her accumulative impression is that most homeless people are very gentle souls, who in many ways are too gentle for this world. (That didn't accomodate the pure-bad-luck and this-cursed-economy factors). But it struck me as an insight. (And I would say cruel culture, rather than world...because we CAN make it different.)

For me, the community answer is not so much the group doing anything to me, but me repeatedly RE-deciding that this is how I will interpret my life in that community. Once I figured out that to belong to the human community in one positive setting was as important to my survival as protein (this was actually a surprise, but interviewing Alan Luks years ago, and the research on altruism, I began to see it)--I just began to look at sticking with it. It could've been Quaker, Buddhist, or a community garden group, or art group, or whatever...for me it fits to be in a religious community that embraces very diverse beliefs, including my agnosticism). Anyway I began to look at the repetition of the behavior of going and showing up as something I:

1) have do to to have a chance at wellness (I lived as an outsider as a poet and writing is hermetic anyway, I had to do this for balance)
2) continue to do because it does divert me from that Great Grief

I think the Great Grief is true and real and I have been near-destroyed by it before.
Tossing my lot in with this particular community is my only chance of exposing myself, regularly, to words and notions and companionship that, some of the time, remind me there may also be Great Love.

(Being agnostic, I'll never prove whether that's true or not. But I will repetitively expose myself to the possibility that it might be, or the despair engulfs me.)

The only think I can do, in community life or in my own struggle, is to keep presenting the vibrant Great Grief...with episodes of love, service (which I do precious little of), and beauty.

I think I can handle the Great Grief better than I can Great Fear.

Another thing I think about when I'm going through repetitive heartbreak is that really, maybe the best goal I can have is to keep my eye on the much older people in my congregation who seem to have a lot of serenity. Normally, it's those who have simply settled into a repetitive life of living simply for themselves, and spending a lot of time in service. Whatever's empty after survival is met, I think I'll put there. And though I'm unhappy now, maybe in 10 years, when I'm 71, I'll find myself more like them. (And if I'm wrong and I'm still crawling on the floor pushing my wailing heart along ahead of me, I know most folks there will be kind enough to pick me up and haul me off to a potluck.)

I also remember the look on my father's face when he died, which was a blast of wonder. So I figure right or wrong, correct or confused, I can go the same place he did.

love to you,
Hops

Meh:
Thanks for the heartfelt words and understanding. (((Hops))) & (((Phoenix))) It feels good just to know that somebody "gets it".

Slowly but surely I think my referral to speak with a counselor is being processed finally, keeping my fingers crossed.

sKePTiKal:
Boat, I need to tag along with Hops' post... explain something I ran across. I hope it makes some sense.

You know the theory of Tao. For everything that exists - it's opposite also exists.
In the midst of facing my own "great grief" - whether that's conceived as a personal despair that can't be let go, or the "collective consciousness" version of humanity's collective "great grief"....

by some stroke of luck, fate or just wishing a huge gaping, yearning wish... I began to be aware of the "great comfort" that exists to equal the "great grief". It's pretty REAL to me, and even though I realize it's really hard to communicate an actual feeling or awareness to another being... I would sincerely like to be able to point people in that direction to find it themselves. I don't really know how to do that.

I only know, that once I began to feel the grief itself (not thoughts about it, shoulds/shouldn't, anything at all structured or process-based)... let myself into that locked room of wailing, temper-tantrum kicking & screaming, overwhelming sadness & chaos, wiping snot on my sleeve - or not even able to do that - kind of total consciousness FEELING... that great comfort started to tap me on the shoulder, try to gently get my attention, and then it held me.... till the tears slowly dried up; sniff! I was completely alone - well, OK... I had kitties and my empath golden retreiver too... but I think some people might want to have another person physically present for this. Insurance or whatever. I know I always feel safest when I'm totally alone so that worked for me. Safety is important.

Anyway, repeated "treatment" sessions like this, helped me realize that the comfort and the grief actually contain each other. We're sad because we care for one we've lost (or never had). If we didn't care... we also wouldn't feel that grief. The fact that this level of caring exists in the world (even if I'm just one wacky, warped person) is a miracle of oppositeness to the old "normal" of negativity, struggle, not understanding what was "wrong" with me. It means to me, that I'm a "whole" person... I can feel both opposites... even simultaneously... and what I didn't have matters LESS to me, than knowing that I'm just a normal person, reacting in a normal way to my own personal tragedy... and I literally felt as if a 16 ton anvil had been lifted off of me. Like I had to pay attention, to keep my feet on the ground!

And something else happened. Like Hops' community of mutual support... I started having these out of the blue, experiences of plain, simple human kindness being offered to me. And it felt good to offer these, myself. (Awkward at first; too...I didn't have a lot of practice or skills.) At first, these experiences brought more tears... but then it started to seem more normal. And the world seemed to have gone from a fuzzy, dim, old black & white movie... to breathtaking technicolor. (maybe I couldn't see that stuff before, trapped under my grief??)

I sure hope you find your way to that pretty soon! You deserve it... we all do.

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