The joy and the pain of being alone: for me, a lesbian, solitude is the perfect word to apply to the coming out experience. I suppose one could say coming out is a process--an on-going experience--never ending. But I am thinking of the beginning of the process. The early days.
The pain was all-consuming. The pain was around a part of me that was waking up, like the pain in a limb that has been in a cast for months and then suddenly released. I was becoming conscious of the fact that life as I was living it would be emotionally unsustainable for me. I was waking up to the fact that my lifestyle as I knew it would be coming to an end. Now some people might welcome such a happening, but for me there was a pervasive sadness about it. Because my life had been comfortable, I was surrounded by a loving family--husband and three children--friends, and I had a career which was productive and satisfying. Any and all of these things would be seriously threatened by revealing my secret and coming out of that safe, but dark, lonely place called the closet.
All of my relationships at home, socially, and at work were in perfect order. All, that is, but one. My relationship with myself was out of order, unhappy, downright painful. What a lonely place this is. Lonely because I have a secret about myself and I am the only one who is aware of it. Once I consciously acknowledged my sexual orientation, my true state of being, I found myself in a very empty, uninhabitable space even though I was physically surrounded by people I loved or just enjoyed being with. I did not really enjoy being with myself. I longed for another life so very distant from where I was in time and space it seemed. I had to make the journey to that distant place. My life depended on it. I will have to hurt some people initially in order to get there, but I had to take those first steps. Staying here would eventually be even more hurtful for myself and those I love. This is the forsaken, isolated,negative place of solitude.
Solitude is not always a negative place. In 1985 when I had just started the process of coming out of that lonely closet--I signed on to a leadership course with Outward Bound. The course took the form of a ten-day trek through the wilderness of the Canyonlands National Park in Utah. We would travel by foot a distance of about 25 miles. This would require learning some climbing techniques, orienteering, pathfinding, and hiking some days long distances with heavy packs on our backs. Some of the climbs and descents, it turned out, were life-threatening. But we all made it.
Somewhere in the middle of the trek we were to experience three days of solitude. We were each directed to our own isolated location where we would stay for 3 days and 2 nights with a sleeping bag, tarp, enough clothes to keep warm during the chilly nights, enough water for the duration, the clothes on our backs, and a pen and paper. Nothing more. No electronics, no reading, no listening devises, no food.
It was an experience I will never forget. Looking through the notes I made at the time, I am reminded of the lessons learned from the three days of solitude.
1. Even at the age of 50 something, I can sleep on slick rock and be comfortable enough to actually sleep.
2. I am “lost” for a moment upon rising in the morning when my daily routine is absent. No toothbrushing, no coffee making, the program required that I stay in this spot. All this requires a different mind set. I must think about what I am doing here in this place of solitude.
3. It is worth while occasionally to put myself in a different place, perhaps an isolated place such as this, to think about the meaning of my existence and keep a meaningful perspective on life.
4. Busying about is a way of hiding from things I don’t want to deal with and a way of hiding from myself.
5. Security and comfort do have value, but keep them in perspective. Don’t be afraid to take risks and to be my own person.
6. I have no food and I haven’t felt hungry. Conclusion: it is not the empty stomach rather it’s the stimuli (food) that causes this well-fed person to feel hungry.
7. Three days and two nights of solitude in the wilderness is a valuable and unique experience. Don’t forget it.
I normally do not write poetry, I haven’t been inclined to read much poetry.
But in solitude in the wilderness I was inspired to write this:
SOLO
Solo, stop, sit, sleep
Don’t busy about
Nothing to be busy about
It’s time for a drink
It’s time to think
Our lives are in this canyon land
We will leave them here
We will take a new route
Back to the old
So solitude can provide for a beautiful place offering a positive experience or it can be a dark, painful place of misery. In either case both solitudes had great value for me. The result was that my life improved. The lesson from those experiences for me, a person who does not spend a lot of time alone is: savor and value your time alone and use it wisely.
9-23-13
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