My Love called me while on his daily walk. He is miles away so an unexpected phone call in the middle of my day—what an underrated and sacred gesture. We get to speak daily, but we don’t hug or touch at all. So any point of connecting in the present, in the same moment, brings about waves of gratitude. He is full of life, and I love everything about him. I heard cars tires screech against the asphalt, and he said that there was some sort of getaway car chase/scene happening. Then we spoke about how whenever I’m listening to him over voice notes or a call, I get a taste of the America that is being shown by the media. Chaos is always finding him—but maybe it’s because, we each call upon/welcome that energy? That neither of us are afraid of it?
Anyway, I’m obsessed. I was also speaking to a friend over the weekend, that that’s how you find longevity in partnership. Find someone you can be sustainably obsessed with. Healthily obsessed with? I’m here, and he’s there, but we are fundamentally connected. For the first time in my life, I feel a very calm bond with someone. The connectedness. The magnetism of connection beyond the physical, that it is hard to describe. True and pure connection. Maybe it’s also because in the philosophies, studies, teachings I/we follow, the world and things are less separate—there is more spaciousness and in that spaciousness, love is the guiding force and principle. And if love is the guiding force and principle, you always invite it to the moment. Even when it’s one of those moodier days. Even if you’re jolted by life happening and things are not going as you’d hope, when you leave a little gap for love, there is a lightness and things can be filled with more ease.
Suffering in duality. It seems that part of being human, means that we have to first feel the pain of duality in the physical world. To be in the mud. Even how the body was structured has dualism and disparity/disjointedness. To be feeling your body in the mud. Perhaps we have to be aware of that first, before we can learn to recognize and be aware of the love that unifies, and the joy in all things.
It is a sweet and beautiful thing to be introduced to a lover’s love. I hope you get to come close that feeling at least once in your life. It felt like a divine hug from the Universe/God/Allah. Other-worldly and spiritual. Rewind to last November: Someone I dated very briefly visited the city I live in and introduced me to his partner.
I had really liked this person at some point in my life. We met at a networking event the year before the pandemic. I would have been lying to myself if I said I could see a real future with him—we were just so different—he was more corporate (definitely the kind who would use the word “liquid” to refer to money), I was more hippie-dippie, but I liked him. He was someone whose company I enjoyed and whose thoughts and opinions I welcomed openly and even, warmly. I liked that one of our hang-outs consisted of a really long un-glamorous sweaty walk.
When we were chatting at the coffee shop he and his girlfriend/fiancee(?) turned to me and said something along the lines of “Taking inspiration from you and your digital nomad life, we are both consultants now and only working part-time.”
Hearing that though, was funny, like an old timey gag where someone slips on a banana or someone’s face gets pied, and then the sad trombone plays. In my body, it felt more like a punch in the gut plus sad trombone womp womp womp echoing in my head for a long time. Because at the time of their visit, I was not only working full-time for one company, I had also been working part-time for another. I was exhausted. I wasn’t in my usual headspace. And I did not feel inspiring.
What a wake up call to get! A former lover and his partner telling you that you somehow inspired them. The two reminded me how hard I had worked to shape my life before I had allowed anyone/anything to derail my vision. It led me to face the current truth that whatever life I was living, did not allow me to be ‘myself’. Whomever I preferred to be.I felt suffocated and stuck.
Less than a month later, I handed in my resignation.
Seeing how helpful Write Together (WT) was for my mind/life/spirit: I am starting over here. I had conflicting feelings about writing again on Livejournal, but the ghost town vibes were not it. There was some promise of life when I saw old friends still updating, but here, there’s anonymity, which I enjoyed on the WT website.
I don’t know if there are any features to this thing, but what I liked about Write Together was it had a slightly gamified feel so you felt some gratification when you managed a diligent writing streak. I suppose, I can tally the streak myself.
I am in the middle of a life excavation. I have a bomb shelter turned closet/storage space full of stuff that I have been meaning to reduce. Instead of dedicating weekends to sorting through what I’ve accumulated and minimizing as I had hoped and initially planned, my weekends in 2024 were spent either sleeping or fulfilling social obligations that allowed me to forget that most of my days were spent in the whirlwind of blurry corporate shadows.
I have finally quit that job (2 more weeks to go), but I have nothing to show for it. Nothing but exhaustion. Nothing liquid either. I wrote that last sentence so confidently as if I am the type of person who would care about money in the way that someone who would sincerely use the term “liquid” to refer to money does. But, I don’t. I care for money the way I care for air. I know I need it to live, but it’s there and there’s plenty of it to go around, but we do not all have the same bodies/access or opportunities for it.
Okay, off I go. I need to get ready for an art exhibition opening—only a tiny part of who I am being in the world.