Draw Solitude Around You Like a Warm Blanket - Get To Know Yourself

Image by Katrina_S from Pixabay 

I was reading Tapas Dwivedi’s words on How to Get Comfortable Being Alone and they really spoke to me. My ex and I separated a year ago and it's only been in the last three months, when I was finally able to move into my own place, that I've at last had the periods of solitude I've needed to start to come back to myself.

I call it my in-between space, and I am in no hurry to leave it. Tapas’ description of solitude as a duvet feels so apt. I often wonder how many people there are living this way. Not just in the world, but even in my own neighbourhood. And I also wonder how many more are surrounded by people who are lonelier than those of us living alone.

If I can paraphrase my favourite words from his article it is these:

“In the raw moments of loneliness that succeed a breakup or bereavement, when we have nowhere to run, we encounter our true self; like I did. And it was scary. It felt like sitting in the corner of a dungeon with a chain locked around my ankle as a stranger towered over me. I wanted to run away, but there was nowhere good enough to run to.
I realised what a shell of a person I was now that my ex-wife had left me... But I was starting to get to know myself from a brand new perspective. Solitude has the power to teach us about ourselves. It is the gym where we must go to train.”

As a consequence of his experience he advocates solitude as a practice for everyone and concludes “Soon you will get to know the most interesting person you have ever met. One who will always be with you no matter what else you lose”.

Now I’m not sure if I would consider myself the most interesting person I’ve met, but I can’t deny the wisdom in his words that I am the only one who will always be with me no matter what or who I lose. So it makes a good deal of sense to get to know and befriend myself. I have to be the one I can rely on to see me, to advocate for me, and to hold and heal me through the hard times.

That has been my biggest lesson these last few years, starting to understand how to have and hold healthy boundaries. As I said to a friend of mine, having kids separates the mature from the immature, we either choose to grow up or we don’t. And I certainly no longer had the capacity to pander to persistent immaturity in an adult – in me or anyone else. 

After full time responsibility for my children most of their lives, separation has proved a somewhat welcome opportunity to hand over some of that responsibility and have a little balance restored in my life. Not that I would have chosen this upheaval for my children, but if they get more quality time with their other parent then that is a good thing. 

It certainly is strange indeed to have motherhood change so dramatically and so suddenly though. Accepting my kids are not going to get consistency in terms of limitations, routines and parenting styles and continually redirecting them back to the other parent when they are there, instead of rescuing them all, is the biggest change.

Otherwise it's nice to have some space to myself and then good to have the children back again. And while I have that space I sink into my solitude like the deliciousness that it is. When the time is right I trust I'll feel the urge to break out this chrysalis-like state, but right now I'm enjoying reacquainting myself with that person who, as Tapas’ said, has been living in the basement all these years.

It’s not easy, particularly when reckoning with the me who abandoned myself for so long. My friend wrote a beautiful prose yesterday that feels so apt:

“To love someone long-term is to attend a thousand funerals of the people they used to be. The people they're too exhausted to be any longer. The people they don't recognize inside themselves anymore. The people they grew out of, the people they never ended up growing into. It takes commitment and respect for the other to not let yourself succumb to your own one thousand deaths.”

To love and respect others fully, without giving away me, is to love and respect myself just as fiercely.

I read an article by Teal Swan this morning talking about the difference between relationships founded in compromise rather than compatibility. She says “Compromise means we settle conflict or reach alignment by way of mutual concession. In essence we believe it’s loving to concede something of value”.

Whereas compatibility is where coexistence is beneficial and adds to the wellbeing of both. She says “It is about creating the right arrangements with people and putting people in the right place in your life according to their and your personal boundaries (personal feelings, thoughts, desires, needs, behaviours, truths etc)”.

As Teal points out, often when we are in conflict with another person, it is because we are operating from two different paradigms. One believes in compromise and the other doesn’t and so you are pulling in different directions for a solution, enhancing the feeling of unworkability on both sides.

What I love about this contrast is it’s shone a spotlight for me on a more conscious way of being in relationships to anyone. As I begin to feel into who I am and what my personal feelings, thoughts, desires, needs, behaviours, truths etc are, it gives me clarity on how to proceed more successfully in creating compatible relationships of every kind.

As Teal says “

“When you build your relationships on the foundation of compatibility, you don’t believe in giving in when it comes to anything in a relationship that will cause you to feel resentment, frustration or pain; or that will compromise your sense of personal wellbeing. You don’t believe in mutual sacrifice.

You don’t believe that balance in a relationship is about meeting half way. Instead, you believe that loving someone means making sure they are not in pain. And them loving you means making sure that you are not in pain, even if that means that you cannot be with a person in a certain relationship arrangement because of it.

Therefore, you also don’t believe in having your own singular happiness at heart. But you don’t believe in sacrificing your singular happiness for the sake of the other person’s happiness either. And you believe that in order for a person to be right and good, they must be willing to look at the incompatibilities that are causing pain and be willing to find a different, more compatible arrangement for you both. You believe in symbiosis rather than give and take.”

With that paradigm in mind, as I alternatively retreat under my blanket of solitude these days versus when I have roles to perform, part of this transformation in the cocoon is very much a revaluation and reorientation of the way I interact with the world and what I will and won’t accept.

Like Tapas, I believe everyone would benefit from periods of solitude in order to get clarity on what parts of us have been living in the basement for years, and who we would like to show up as in the world today. If this sounds like a yearning you have, in what ways could you draw solitude around you like a warm blanket to get to know yourself better?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Give Yourself Permission to Live Life in Alignment With Your True Nature, How Blissful Would It Be to Abandon Your Life Load?, How Living Your Passions Fully Combats Feeling Lonely, Loneliness – Meet the Most Important Person in Your Life, Does Your Heart Long to Be Accepted for Being Just You? and Meditation – the Cornerstone to Your Success. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.