There is a gap between loneliness & solitude. I used to spend a lot of time in the former & now find myself firmly ensconced in the latter. Yet I am only now noticing the difference.

When I was a child, I cherished being alone because the only person to be with was Mom & she was demanding at best… “Did you do the list? Ironing? Vacuuming? Polishing?” All I’d done with the list was find a hiding place I thought she’d never look for it. This didn’t work as Mother had a memory beyond normal & was quite willing to review every chore left undone, every sin committed against hearth & home in that category. And she always started with the very first time I’d missed something & worked into the present. So being alone meant I could do just what I wanted & only that.

It became loneliness when I didn’t want to be the only person in the mirror. This was a position I occupied for many years, an Occupation worthy of the name torture.

There came a time when I began to appreciate (tho did not really recognize) that doing these little jobs earned me personal rewards of satisfaction, of fresh environs & clean clothes. I liked keeping up with the house & the sense of accomplishment it brought.

There are many who cannot handle their own company: they cry their missing persons as tho their tears will draw them back. I sure don’t. When you’re gone from my life, especially if I’m the one who’s chosen to put you out of bounds, you’re gone. I say goodbye, erase the contact information anywhere it occurs & pay it no more mind.

Um, this is probably not normal. But I’ve never laid claims to that term personally. I seldom look back & if I do, it is to find something I left behind, not because I’m into remaking the contact.

Others lament relationships gone dry, squandered money & the gaps in life they perceive from these. I move ahead, working around any holes in the emotional landscape until I fill them in. I’m more likely to miss some activity done together than the person I did it with.

There has always been a set-aside for this in me: I don’t feel it should be this easy. But it is. I don’t linger in it, I don’t doubt myself anymore for being the way I am.

I figure I’ve achieved two goals set long ago in my life: nothing left to lose & nothing left to prove. This provides stress relief immeasurable! If I haven’t proven my worth, probably never will. If I have lost because of an encounter, not much I say or do in that newer reality will resolve or bind it back.

I know others feel I’m faking this, but, no, it is real enough. I’ll hang a hat on it & await tomorrow in peace & comfort. I figure I’m made this way, for better or worse, so I may as well get on with life in the new paradigm thus created.

I claim my power & presence in this way. I don’t have to tell my stories anymore – if I don’t care for others’, how much less will they care for mine? I keep the funny ones only & repeat them for best effect.

Could this mean a constant revamping of selfhood? That’s one result of being thus. So many spend life with a crick in their neck from looking behind. I’ve always felt I cannot get ahead gazing over my shoulder.

Less than perfect I stand. Happy in this condition I walk forward. Blessed to the uttermost, I am.

Moving. Need I say another word? Top of the list for stressors. Moving at this stage seems frivolous in so many ways. I have it “all” here: a place in community, friends of all description, walkers, foodies, familiar volunteer activities, close-ups of a tolerable reality. Yet something is missing from this situation which I am seeking out.

My cat has her own dreams of sameness. She likes her chair in a certain spot, the sun coming at a specific angle, having a variety of “venues” to perch upon. Now even the cinderblock wall she rushed to outside every morning is disassembled. She liked the higher perch. I moved the chair to that place, but the chair is for sitting on later in the morning, not first run at 3:30 a.m. So now she comes back indoors & sits at the front door before curling up on her office chair, palpably bored.

In this halfway place odd noises occur. An investigation shows a picture has slipped from its hook. I remember the last time relocating & how the pictures removed themselves like this. Now that I’ve packed the spare bulbs & given them away as fragile, my favorite lamp starts to flicker & two of its 3-way lumens are gone. A top I gave away to a rummage sale jumped up off the pile when I attended, so I brought it back home. My red shirt: really?

My mind is halfway to wherever too. I nibble at the idea of home being totally empty then waiting for the change to happen, the green light to depart to shine. I look at things & think, “I have to pack that.” But it’s something very tiny that I don’t want lost in the mush of prepping a yard sale.

I have met a boy-man who says he wants to spend time with me but more wants to stay at home & chill. I talk with the other men I know who are intent on wearing me down on my chauvinistic political views (which I do not bring up for discussion.) I give food to a friend who denies having my containers – not even a “Hey, let me go look” just a “No, I don’t have any of your stuff.” (I see myself dropping stuff off on his porch & believe you me, the food stew was not dropped from a ladle thereupon.) Another dances with proving a Trump son more evil than a Biden son, but I cannot equate money with harm & that seems to be the cutting edge making my heart bleed. Perhaps its time to pack up something small & fragile to occupy myself.

I pray a lot these days. I tap on Heaven’s windowpanes when the doorbell doesn’t work. I know help seems farther away cuz my Heaven is also repositioning itself in a comfy new spot.

I stop “looking local” in order to keep eyes to the horizon. I daydream about new vistas, about movie theatres with a real sound system, about being able to buy shoes & clothing without driving 75 miles. I dream of “different” – faces, places, spaces, bases. I think about the cat rushing to my new roommate & how happy we are to share her. I think of not having to deal with all the stuff I have now, but translating it into gas money to replace it elsewhere.

I smile.

Even the news seems void of course – a Newsprint Retrograde that never goes positive. Oh, it can go gleeful at times, but usually about items that have a “Hmmmm” trailing after. What has happened to “information” is criminal. The language barrier has become insurmountable & the tech is not yet outwardly invented to translate that to humans at the level where it engages our truth meters. (This can be done, but only by the heart-brain after exposure to a more resonant Truth; an opening, as it were.)

In that larger space this Truth is interpreted by discernment. I could add every adjective there is before that word & be accurate with each. Truth is, for us each, our perception only. There’s no way for me to function with someone else’s since my discernment is individual to me. To the media, I am what is known as a lost cause – but it was they who lost me first.)

I hope to be one of those Truth translators. I hope to develop my fantastic personalities out there in the ether: my superpowers. It’s my vocation to be a voice for Truth & have mine be adaptable/acceptable/accountable to & for others, for the positive.

It’s not my way to take over the world, but I wouldn’t mind being allowed to drive sometimes.

For Heaven’s sake, where would I take the world? Well, on my Journey, of course. For each of us, there is really only our Journey. Most travel in the same direction but the ones determinedly traveling backwards upend the entire flow in a fluttering super-babble of mis-directives.

I understand there’s no understanding anymore to fight or flight the System. Where I choose to not submit is not mainstream, but no less imprinted on the Akashic. I’m making my mark & it’s atop all the ones I’ve already made. There’s a cliche for that, “carving out a life.”

Wait’ll we find out it’s an illusion we all made up, a long story with a nasty character who curses & never gets written out until the very end … That one to whose name you react to along the way; (names being triggers.) I’ll bet it will happen in tiers: some will casually walk off the stage for a coffee, some will break in ways which are not as much wounds as triplicate repair tickets (body/mind/spirit). For many, the intensity will be too much to unwrap our heads from for a time. And then we’ll find out there’s no such thing as time.

It’s an anti-Eternity to live here like this, tapped on till we’re tapped out, flapping the pages of the script with all those red-inked, last-minute-change marks.

I believe once we discover the joy or our real divinity, we’ll sheepishly laugh, clatter off the boards, thumping each other on the back as we exit stage left.