🌅 TREE 616: When Jeff Gill was lonely
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While I was in Russia, my family moved out. They went to South Wales. When I returned to Tucson, I lived alone for the first time in my life. The good part was my immaculately clean apartment. The bad part was my loneliness. Sometimes in the early days, it was hard to breathe for all the loneliness squeezing my chest.
After a few months I was pretty much fine with being away from my family, and the real ache set in. I was 20 years old, and I had no woman.
An important note: I was the guy who, as a kid when I heard that French kissing involved sticking your tongues in each other’s mouths, dutifully said ‘Eew!’ out loud while thinking it sounded like a pretty good idea and wishing I could hurry and grow up.
I decided that if I was stuck without a love life, I would get to know God. On Friday nights when the rest of the world was falling in love and/or getting laid I went to romantic nature spots and talked to God and listened to God and appreciated nature.
After about eight weeks of working hard at it, I became content. I was happy being alone. I felt that I could be happy being single, even if it turned out that I stayed single for the rest of my life.
‘So marry two half-people and, oh / shouldn’t one make the other whole’
I’m a big believer in the idea that in a relationship it’s not the one partner’s job to fix or complete the other. I also believe that there is an additive (or even multiplicative) completeness that is created in healthy relationships between two people in love.
Grow slowly
Jeff
I’m emotionally changed reading that. I’m single and live in a 1910 schoolhouse in Bisbee, alone, but never lonely. I love my relationship with my creator. As life comes to me, I feel Life, my essence in response. I’m the Cake and others are the frosting. I’m good alone but in other’s presence, it’s dessert time 🍰🍮🧁
Good stuff Jeff. I really agree with the idea that no one can fix a partner. Some people look at love like 1/2 + 1/2 = 1. That might work in math but not relationships. Two healthy people in relationship are much more than the sum of the parts. One may chase a thousand but two can chase 10,000.