It’s the alone part that’s so hard.
It’s the feeling that no one else is going through what you’re experiencing. That your particular brand of grief or relief is unique, and because of that no one else will understand so why try?
It’s true. No one else will experience what you’ve experienced. No one else will react the same way or feel the same feelings. It’s also a lie.
I’m reminded of a statement that has governed my theological thinking for a long time. Every human being is like all others, like some others, and like no other. This, to me, is more truth than whatever hyper-individualism a postmodern world gives us.
You are distinct, you have some things that are special to you, you are not unique. There is one of you who is like all others, like some others, and like no other, and your grief and relief will follow the same pattern.
So, often, instead of reaching out, we fall inward. We take trips down “how could you not see this lane.” We open the closet of anxieties and pull out a special “you’re such an idiot pin” and turn it over in our hands a couple times. We climb into the attic and open a trunk of “I can’t believe I believed that.”
What lives in those spaces may be distinct to you. That we all have spaces like that is not.
I’m sitting on the back porch sharing a beer with a friend. We both work for ourselves, and both have anxieties about whether or not we’ll make it. Today, mine have to do with a sense of languishing, of getting up in the morning and not knowing why I go to my office in the basement.
I have 1,000 steps to take, and they’re all first steps, and none of them feel like a first first step. One hinges on another and that one hinges on completing a different step. It’s so much easier to be paralyzed by it all, and so much less fulfilling. I’m explaining this to my friend who is able to echo how it feels to be in that spot, because he’s been there as well. And, he relays a story about another friend of his visited that space. Suddenly, I don’t feel so alone.
Nothing was solved, expect for one thing, I am like some other people, and they are like me. That’s enough to give me some hope. Tomorrow I may wake up and feel the same way, only I do so with a cloud of witnesses, some who’ve pushed through and some who gave up.
It’s a relief, and it’s a source of grief. I am not alone, which is amazing. Sometimes it’s just good enough to be together. That can be bread for the journey and water for the parched.
I miss community sometimes since I’ve stepped back from the church, but to tell the truth, the church was better at conformity than community. If I matched their expectations, then I was acceptable. The moment I deviated, they didn’t know what to do.
It’s lonely at times; it’s hard to get your bearings when you’re charging down a path few others have ventured. Furthermore, those who watch you use old language to try and make you fit back in. All the while you’re building a new story with new words that don’t make sense to them.
It’s can be lonely trying to explain yourself, but it doesn’t have to be. Like a conversation had over beers in a backyard, if we’re willing to be a little vulnerable and try to find the words that make sense of our experience and share them, then we might find a companion or two on our journeys, even if only for a little while.
This is a comforting column. Thank you for writing it and for sharing it. I'll be sharing it (eventually) with family who just lost their 9-year-old grand/daughter to fast-moving cancer. Even the thought of losing her hurts me, so I cannot even imagine what they're going through. Again, thank you.