missing you

Lonely today. Thinking about other times in my life when I have had more friends, love, companionship. Recent times and back to college, to high school... I've been blessed with extraordinary friendships and extraordinary people in my life...

Read over some old emails I probably should have left alone, and then, thanks to Facebook and a reminiscence about going to Emack & Bolio's with Amy for oreo ice cream in an oreo cone ;-) , I got back in touch with Peter M (!) and reminisced a little... just wish I had a circle of good friends now like the ones I had in college, like that day a bunch of us hung out at Peter's house and invented weird dances, or remember the "Amy Appreciation Party" with strips of printer paper as streamers?

Ah, I catch myself: this sounds like 'poverty mind.' I worked with this on retreat - the delusion of not having enough, even though the world around me is filled with incredible richness.

The instruction was to sit with the feelings instead of trying to fill up the holes with stuff. And to do tonglen for all those who, like me, experience this sense of basic neediness, this loneliness - for all those who wish that other people could take away the fundamental human condition of alone-ness.

I've also worked with this same mentality in my psych program - the focus on loss, instead of on what I still have. There, the solution is different - join groups, take classes, make friends. My life in the last two years has been painfully narrowed by an all-consuming focus on work. For better or for worse, I'm liberated from that, and can try to meet more people.

I'm already doing that through my meditation activities. I hung out with two of my retreat buddies this past week, and met the roommate of one of them, who is hooking me into the campaign for universal healthcare.

I'm also going to take salsa and print-making classes, so I'm excited about that. And today is the first meeting of an artists' group I'm starting, so that's cool too.

So... pulling myself together, getting off the couch, going on with my day. With my life. I think if I can enlarge my life, the marriage stuff may fall into place as well, one way or the other - I will see it with more perspective and I will also be better equipped to fully live whatever solution ensues.