Quote of the Day

As I might have mentioned in a previous post (I write too damn much in too many places to remember, so I suppose asking any reader to “remember” where I wrote what is crazy!) I am watching the Netflix “series” “You.” So much of the second season is legitimate mockery (in my very “East Coast” opinion) of “LA;” however, this “quote of the day” comes from a less “mockable” acupuncture session (I am a HARDCORE advocate of acupuncture … and I would be going through it right now if the last few tries hadn’t resulted in terrible pathergy reactions – note the “ironic” Facebook re-posting from a decade ago TODAY of such a pathergy reaction to acupuncture….) –

“What did you lose that makes you chase love so much?”

It is a completely valid question … and one that I believe far too many people fail to ask themselves. We get lonely – we FEEL lonely – we find the “lacks” in our lives and chase “love” (companionship, really) seeking to fill the holes while avoiding looking directly at them. It is such an unconscious chase … I know it is something that haunts my dreams probably more than any other “topic;” and although I know MY answer (as convoluted and tortuous as that may be), it does not really ANSWER the question, which, in my current position, is simply due to the combination of physical limitations and the circumstances that have necessarily arisen from essentially living “alone” for over a decade. At any rate, for those of you who are either “healthy” people or people who have somehow managed to bypass the social limitations imposed by chronic illness in all its insidious ways, I ask this question – “What did YOU lose that makes you chase love so much?”

I feel that the world would be a better place if we all answered this question honestly for and to ourselves. Too many people just want to erase the feeling of being LONELY failing to realize that surrounding oneself with people – even living with someone and having kids with that person, &c., – does not ERASE loneliness. Being alone is not the same as feeling lonely – and vice versa: a problem with which I struggle, having the very independent “personality” that I do have. But if we all really looked at this question and looked deeply at those holes and answered these sorts of questions and learned to REALLY love ourselves FIRST, how much better would our relationships with all “others” be? How much better would the entire world be? I like to think, at least, that being this “honest” with ourselves would only be for the good (and the “better good”). How much of that is the “inner optimist” in me just spouting out evidenceless hope? I’m not sure, but I DO KNOW that HOPE IS the key to just about everything – especially when we are dealing with chronic illness.

And with that very vague “explication” of my “quote of the day,” I will end this post. I HOPE with everything in me that you have your own answer to this question and that you haven’t just fallen for someone hoping to fill in the gaps, so-to-speak. I hope you are all having a happy and healthy day (or night) wherever you are in the world and I do hope if it is night where you are, you are not haunted by the kinds of dreams that haunt me (that is, of things that were never really lost but feel very much that way….)….

❤ Always, Beth

P.S. I do believe we can “outrun the demons” … but I also believe they ALWAYS catch up to us. It might be tomorrow; it might be in 50 years … but there WILL come a time when you realize what you failed to face has grown into a giant sinkhole that engulfs everything and everyone in your life. I don’t know that I have viable “proof” of this, but it is what I believe. We are told that is “Faith.” But that’s for another post as well (and a previous one….)!