I don't know that I will ever be able to find words to express what we are seeing in front of our eyes, so at least for today, I have to fall back on expressing where my life is at. It is all I can articulate right now.
And yes, I know how completely inappropriate it is, in these times, to refer to my adult self as a "girl", although in a bizarre way it reflects how small I feel right at the moment. As so often happens, several steps forward spiritually last week were followed by a major crash this past weekend.
Basically, what hit me was my essential aloneness. People of so many different stripes seem to be finding each other, which, of course, is the law of attraction at work, but as time goes on, I have fewer and fewer kindred spirits around me. My angst is exacerbated by the fact that a deadline for moving is approaching and I just cannot seem to look outward for a housing solution one more time. All I can do is weed out my belongings and try to become clearer and clearer about who I am, so that the right people or situation will find me...yet that little girl who has had many doors shut in her face is, even now, not fully able to trust the process.
Then came the piece de resistance--having to fill out a form and provide an "emergency contact". I realized, with horror, that I don't have one. Seriously. No one in my life is close enough to me, emotionally, that we could play that role with one another. Friends in my age group either live far away/and/or have husbands-children-grandchildren of their own to worry about or with whom to play that role. Some have major health issues, or are struggling to remain mentally alert. As simple as my life is, the fact that I have lived so differently is confusing, even scary, to my friends I think, and I can't bring myself to add to their loads. The ideal solution would be one of my youngish nieces, but because of the family situation, to approach them would be interpreted as "Aunt Liz needing help", which might send these lovely young women further out into the sunset...perhaps understandably.
Forty years or so ago, being "a single girl" didn't scare me. Heck, I wandered over to England for the first time in 1978, on my own without a care in the world. Even a few years ago, my single state coupled with trying to align with Goddess values of spontaneity and love had at least a component of adventure and magic. But at 68, my deep unacknowledged fear of aloneness seems to have surfaced big time, bigger even than having few resources and no permanent home. I don't really think my married friends are ultimately any more secure...the structures of their lives may be teetering behind the scenes. Looking out at a world that seems to share none of my values adds to the scariness of this moment. But I don't want to live completely alone as these significant events unfold. That's been my whole life, at least existentially.
What do I do in these terrifying moments? Keep breathing. Keep breathing. Keep breathing. And keep remembering that the longer I can manage to stay alive as a representative of the Goddess, the better it will be for Her efforts to heal this struggling earth. Also to try to appreciate that, even in this, I may have been scouting uncharted territory.
