July 25, 10:07 pm: Ramblings
I feel as if I have just rediscovered what it truly means to be fully present within myself. The towel wrapped around my head, the towel wrapped around my body. The water dripping down my legs as I step out of the shower. There is so much to me that is yet to be discovered...I am such a complex person...I cannot say what I feel. But to know that sensation as I washed my hair, to feel the heat and the cold as I shivered in the shower, as I realized that I was actually, physically, feeling...to touch my face as I tried to determine whether I was crying or not...to realize what a powerful feeling this was...and all thanks to an amazing lady who's written an amazing book. Women Food and God is helping me in ways I didn't think it would.
I thought it might force me to eat differently. In fact, I approached it with a bit of skepticism: ok, the food on my plate is symbolic of my relationship with God. And I can fix myself by fixing my relationship with food. Riiiiiight. It sounds pretentious or presuming when I say it that way...my relationship with food...but really, it is a relationship.
I'm at the part in this book where Roth explains a meditation where you just feel your stomach. If you start to notice your mind drifting away from your stomach, focus on your breathing to center yourself. Think about how your stomach is feeling. I won't write it down because wouldn't that defeat the point of a meditation, but I started to feel an emotion that I felt strongly yesterday: loneliness.
I realized something about myself. I'm a child. And I don't mean that I'm immature or dumb; I mean I'm somewhat naive. I've only had one serious relationship. I feel that I desperately need and want to be in a serious romantic relationship. It's been over a year since we broke up, and it's approaching the one-year mark of the last time we really talked as people who had been in a relationship. I'm scared; I want to move on, but there's a part of me that thinks I will never be able to find anything that was as good as what I once had. How can I possibly go through the stages of a relationship again? How can I introduce myself to someone, decide that I want him, go through the flirty phases and go out on dates? I don't know how to do it, and I never have. I had one "boyfriend" in high school, and that was 3 months of flirting that led up to my first kiss followed by a week of awkward dating, ending in a breakup over the phone because he wanted to try a relationship with an older girl. I don't know what to do when it comes to relationships.
I guess the ending of this will be pretty open-ended. It's really just a free-write, and I have to go to bed soon, plus there are a few things I need to do beforehand. Maybe I just need to trust myself.
