My Relationship with Me

The moonlight is bright outside, illuminating the waves as they beat against the shore. There are birds calling from the water’s edge, and I imagine they are feasting on their kinsman with a broken wing that the dog wouldn’t stop bothering on the walk today. I should be disturbed by this, but I am too busy feeling the breeze’s fingers through my hair, still damp from my afternoon dunking. My ears are full of so many sounds I cannot yet discern – I think I hear frogs, now and then a gecko, once in a great while a Mexican song, whistled or sung. I am here to heal, and these sounds will become a mother’s hum to me, rocking me to sleep.
I am here to heal, but I am fighting disappointment in myself that I need it at this point. I have had a year of complete bliss – of living on an island in the Puget Sound, followed by time far up a river valley, with only the mountains and the fresh pine air, followed by this: the beginning of three months next to a beach in Mexico. I am not coming off of a drug addiction, out of a bad relationship, away from a death in the family. I am not alone and drifting without direction, regardless of what it may look like to some. In many ways, I have gotten to know myself more in this past year than I ever thought possible – gotten to know what I need to be happy and begun to strive for it. Yet, despite all this, I am still here with open wounds.
In the past few months, I have been working too much with the idea that I could rest in Mexico. I have forgone sleep, healthy meals, time alone and exercise with the idea that I will get to do all or nothing that I desire in Mexico. The problem is that this is a recurring theme for me: work too hard with the idea that it will all be over soon. If it will all be over soon, there is no need to spare myself, my heart, my body, my sanity, because one day soon I will have the time for all of it.
But that’s not what I want. I don’t want to live for the times I get to escape – the times that I pick up my bags and leave my worries behind. I want to own my worries and take them with me – to appreciate and pack them along with my favorite books. I want my worries to be things that make me excited to get up in the morning, not something I am looking forward to leaving.
I want to be able to maintain something constant and healthy. I want to be able to wake up in the morning and wish for my responsibilities – to be able to leave them alone or scoop them up like sand dollars and take them with me to the beach. I want something that I think is falling farther and farther away in American society: the kind of serenity in my everyday life that most people only find on vacation.
Am I crazy? Of course I am. Is it possible? Of course it is. I’m not sure – I’m new at this, remember – but I think the secret is to work on your relationship with yourself like you would with anyone else. People who have been in long marriages, relationships or friendships for that matter always talk about finding the time to be together – reserving time for the two of you to remember why it is you like each other and why you’re important to one another’s lives. This doesn’t have to be as touchy-feely as it sounds: a nice dinner out, a barbecue, a ski date, a movie night with take-out. Enjoying the things you love to do together, together. Why shouldn’t you have to do the same for yourself?
However, I think I may need more time than most. A friend told me once that I probably didn’t really need human interaction more than once a week. This might insult some people; I was relieved that someone finally got it.
Between leaving Chelan and getting here via Mexico City, I heard it many, many times. “Just one person?” “Only one ticket?” “Are you here alone?” “Many people wouldn’t do this alone.” “I admire people who can travel alone.”
The thing is…I don’t get lonely. I enjoy my time by myself. I don’t feel alone…when I’m alone. Which is perhaps why I feel that I have been missing my time with myself – because there have been too many distractions, people, places, things -- and I haven’t been able to enjoy my time with me.
So here I am. Like any good relationship, you can’t fix it once and expect it to stay fixed just because you said so. I feel like I should have discovered this about myself already, but there are some things that you must continue to practice, even after the lesson has been learned. I will continue to spend time with me, heal the rift that has grown between myself and who I am, and spend some time – much needed time – on my relationship with me.