To Be Alone

Yesterday was just plain hard. I have the sense that I have to keep pushing through this discomfort -- showing up to it -- instead of covering it up again. But it sucks. Before I went to sleep last night I just yelled F*#% as loud as I could, which was pretty damn loud, given that I was alone in the house and it's winter so my windows and my neighbors windows are all closed. In fact I yelled it a few times. It just really seemed to perfectly express what I was feeling.

Once again, I woke up to an early morning, internal alarm in the form of the chorus to Take Me to Church playing in my head. And again I felt confusion about the message. So I employed the same frustration routine I'd done just before going to sleep last night, and that helped a little.

I also tried just being as gentle and loving toward myself as I possibly could. And that helped a little bit too, as did dragging my ass out of bed to go to practice this morning.

When I got home, it occurred to me that maybe the message isn't literal - - that it's time for me to go to church -- maybe it's an invitation to find out more about the artist. So I did some poking around, and I found another Hozier song that seems to express what I'm feeling right now:

Never feel too good in crowds,
With folks around, when they're playing
The anthems of rape culture loud,
Crude and proud creatures baying
All I've ever done is hide
From our times when you're near me
Honey, when you kill the lights, and kiss my eyes
I feel like a person for a moment of my life

But you don't know what hell you put me through
To have someone kiss the skin that crawls from you
To feel your weight in arms I'd never use
It's the God that heroin prays to

It feels good, girl, it feels good
It feels good, girl, it feels good
It feels good, girl, it feels good
Oh to be alone with you

There are questions I can't ask
Now at last the worst is over
See the way you hold yourself
Reel against your body's borders
I know that you hate this place
Not a trace of me would argue
Honey, we should run away, oh someday
Our baby and her momma
And the damaged love she makes

But I don't know what else that I would do
Than try to kiss the skin that crawls from you
Than feel your weight in arms I'd never use
It's the God that heroin prays to

It feels good, girl, it feels good
It feels good, girl, it feels good
It feels good, girl, it feels good
Oh to be alone with you

And for now, for better and for worse, I get to be alone with me, and try to do what may be the very hardest thing to do: kiss the skin that crawls from me. It's soooo much easier, for me at least, to attend to those outside of me...