Come out of The Dark Night of the Soul

Its nearly Good Evening, AZ!  I've been looking at homes to rent on-line nearly the whole day.  Another start over to my life and one I'm looking forward to positively and with power rumbling in my innards.   I have realized I've had a default position of fear that had grown voraciously over the same years I colored with the Long Dark Shadow of the Night vernacular wherein I felt helpless to do anything but writhe in the paw of the mega gorilla.   (That was meant to bump your imagination into picturing me as small of waist and luscious legged while my young (harrumph) lovely face ever delights even though my mouth is agape with screaming for my life.)

  I'm not sure why I am yearning for this now, except that it may a deep, deep wish I harbor all the time.  You know, to be younger, to be leaner, to be desirable enough to be watched through the worst times of life.  Bingo!  There it is, see how you help?

All right, I checked; thank goodness I remembered having erred before.  I did not mean to say long dark shadow of the night, but rather “the dark night of the soul”.  Finally, finally coming out the other end of my own,  I was pleased to read the book description of the #1 return (Amazon, surprise) by Google, a book entitled The Dark Night of the Soul by Gerald G. May.  He says “deep, authentic, healthy spirituality” requires our dark side.  (Well, I certainly come bearing gifts with that then.)  He is stating that encountering (with honesty) that “dark night of the soul” can lead to true spiritual wholeness.  The darkness needn't be sinister, but rather can indicate “our liberation takes place mysteriously, in secret, and beyond our conscious control.”  

I must say, I truly, truly am eager to see how “the universal spiritual experience of disorientation, doubt, fear, emptiness, ‘dryness’, and despair” that I all too often believed were going to be the end of me are going to lead to my wholeness, spiritual or otherwise, because madly insane though it often sounded to me while in it (forever, it felt) I did expect to come through it and somehow be better.  Definitely, definitely, I would have preferred bliss.  Certainly, certainly, I had little use for “reality”, whatever that is.

Dear heart,  (now once again, let me assure and welcome AZ as I share)

You may or may not care to know I think of you daily.  You used to call me “sweetie”, you used to tell me you loved me, there were times when I was surprised to hear you say you missed me.  I say I was surprised because you never seemed to be powerfully motivated to see me, spend time with me or even talk to me.  As far as I was concerned I wanted all those things nearly constantly.  Perhaps that clarifies my surprise.

  

I wouldn't be all that “surprised” though if you were to respond with something I wouldn't expect and wouldn't know what to do with without hours and hours of looking at it every way I could conceive of, and then I'd want to practice my responses several times while I had nothing else to do like sit on the toilet or some such.  I'm usually not that slow to retort.  I know you know that.  You must know any number of things I don't, to tie my thinking and reacting parts into such ridiculous knots and, frankly, I've never run into anyone like you in that way.  I feel my mind and emotions get glommed together in some way and if I could watch they'd be trying to catch and get the best of each other and they're surprised, too.

Well, it's two weeks shy of a year now when you said something to the effect of “I'm taking Tuesday off (absolutely unheard of that you should take any day off) and we're going to start doing some "couple" things.  We'll take in a movie or something.  I'd like to think you could imagine my excitement, even if your intention was as cruel as your behavior was.  I did feel by your tone I was rude and impatient and unnecessarily intrusive when I called around two or three in the afternoon overcome with angst about whether or not any “couple things” might be in the offing. 

I know from a few experiences with you that preceded this one that you and I are unlikely to see any of this from the same outlook.  I remember when I resorted to writing you fairly early on in our relationship using Hendricks’s Love Letter Format which I really believed would be the most loving and kind way I could ever let you know how I felt.  Rather than open up a way for us to talk, which I fully anticipated, you said I had written some terrible things.  It was the worst letter you had ever received, you said.  

I cannot find a way to look at you saying later on the Tuesday I understood to be “our” couple day (when you actually had worked, and were still working, just like usual) that you would keep in touch because you knew that was important to me and interpret how all that became not hearing from you further.  That extended out to you not picking up my calls and we have not been in touch since.  I did go by a half dozen times or so over the ensuing first six months to make sure you were still alive, and hopefully, well.

I had not planned this the way it’s turning out, but I’m going to post this on my blog reality versus bliss.  I still have hopes for us, odd though that seems.  I was going to say, odd though that seems, even to me, or especially to me; but of course that seems odd to me.  I’m the one seeing it that way.  It’s because I’m beginning to understand how truly odd a good portion of my thinking has been at least as far back as when I was nineteen and started to keep the occasional journal, that I have some real hope for myself. 

Another thing that likely impacts all of this is being told, for the first time I’m aware of, three or four months ago:  I’m codependent.  I assure you I knew I was not being complimented!  In the course of traipsing myself through a questionnaire that stripped me of all personal doubt, I realized something truly astonishing to me, and that was that I unerringly chose unavailable men – my whole flipping life!  I’m making the mental review a little too quickly to be positively certain; but that was always emotionally unavailable to clarify.  I’ve always abhorred women who could stomach (or other organ wise) live with carting off another woman's man.  Two damned good reasons leapt nimbly to mind as to why that would be a serious breach as far as I’m concerned.  I reach back to my third year of life for the first.

If you look at the time of this post, perhaps it might be easier to forgive the loose-y goose-y wanderings of the mind.  I do apologize.  This will seem unfinished because it is.  The entire concept of reality always sticking up its sore thumb when most of us feel it's really bliss we seek, maybe crave; is something I really want to address, and I feel I need to lay some paving stones to work from first.

It is not my intention to smear or hurt or raise a ruckus.  I addressed this man whom I have the fondest of feelings for as Dear Heart because I speak to him often, even though there is no answer.  There are many unusual “things” between us that explain (at least to me) why each of us has been far less than ideal and would have a relationship that falls far short the mark, at least in the time we met and attempted to have a relationship.  Additionally, I will soon have something he will want enough (I'm pretty sure) I hope we'll at least speak briefly.  I'm preparing ahead, in hopes.

So, dear heart, and AZ, sweet dreams.