Chronic physical pain/chronic emotional pain

Sometimes, going into a retreat/practice weekend is energizing. Often, it is draining, demanding, and brings to light exactly what I'm wrestling with.

The rest of this is long. In the LJ days, I'd have cut it. It's also as honest as I can be right now.

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Two years ago, I was freshly grieving the sudden loss of a relationship I thought would last the rest of my life. I haven't really dated too much since, and I've been rejected time after time around the same two themes (paraphrased): "you are too good of a person or friend/you deserve better" and "you are too different/complex from the norm."

Four months ago, I was packing to prepare for the first of two moves since then.

Six weeks ago, I spent 16 hours straight around the imminent death of one of the most complex relationships I'll ever have. Mom died a few days later.

One month ago, I took the leap of working full time - a thing I had not done since 2004.

Three weeks ago, I put my feet in the local sangha - a thing I had not done since August 2013.

A week ago, I unpacked the very first box in a move that depends which my ability to work full time, pay more rent than I ever have, and handle the shifted dynamics of one of my oldest and most complex friendships.

These are not the most pressing and urgent issues in my social radius, and outside of a touching amount of practical and logistical aid... they are all things I'm dealing with amid being of help to the urgent and the needing of those whose pain sings more loudly than mine.

There is an adjustment that comes with settling into chronic physical pain - it folds into your life to a point where it is like getting dressed or eating or breath; just a garden variety part of your life. You don't talk about it as much; who talks about the day in, day out grind when it is unpleasant but present?

It seems that there is a likewise adjustment to chronic emotional pain. I'm starting to go through that, and it's just as difficult as it was to do this with all the aspects of my life affected by the physical.

At some point yesterday, I fell down the well of the awe-inspiring, truly epic, and unfathomable loneliness around all of that.

It took my breath. It broke my heart. It's one of the most painful emotional experiences I've had in my entire life.

So I took another breath, and went back to my tonglen practice for the pain that sings louder than mine. It's what I could do to help... and that was the name of the retreat: "How Can I Help?: the Basic Goodness of Society."

But mine isn't gone, and I'm with it again this morning, in the quiet hours before I put it down because neither I nor my roommate work today - a rare chance to make some co-decisions about the Shambhala household and Home I'm working to build.

I have no words for this. I don't even know whom to ask for the words... who might know this state of loneliness well enough to have touched it so completely that the have a way to describe it. Except for Pema:

"So even if the hot loneliness is there, and for 1.6 seconds we sit with that restlessness when yesterday we couldn't sit for even one, that's the journey of the warrior." (Ani Pema Chödrön, "When Things Fall Apart: Heartfelt Advice for Hard Times," p 68)

~Norbu Pamo (Jewel Warrior)