17 – Keep Me From The Well of Myself

4/4/21

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about being alone. I’m not sure about you, but I spend a large majority of my time by myself. I go to the gym alone, I shop for groceries alone – I write, I cook dinner, I clean, I go to sleep alone.

And I hope that you’re able to imagine the fondness with which I speak about this solitude. Truly, after exiting a long term relationship a few years ago, I have reveled in the gift of my own choice – that dinner is whatever I’m craving. That the movie is whatever I’m in the mood for. That the mess I’m cleaning is my mess.

Jane Austen is one of my favorite authors, and last year, I finally got around to reading Emma. In it, Austen penned a line that I love.

Blessed with so many resources within myself the world was not necessary to me. I could do very well without it.

Contextually, the character who spoke these words was referring to a justification of the wealth of her husband – not quite what it has come to mean to me. I guess I find in it both an alluring temptation and a terrifying potential that explains a battle I find myself waging daily.

The temptation to fall into a well of myself. To strive to meet my every need, to hold all of my thoughts and feelings as truth without outward challenge. To let the potential or actual hurt of an external relationship justify a life lived internally – without the answering call of the beauty and vulnerability that tip the scales away from pain.

I could do very well without the world. My own companionship is a gift to me, and while loneliness finds its way in often, I’m neither unfamiliar with nor avoidant of this feeling. Loneliness is an old friend. 

But I know that a life lived internally is an incomplete one. That there are days and people and experiences filled with meaning and beauty and joy that I could never find on my own, that there are lessons I could never teach myself, gifts I could never think to give myself. I’m prideful, and this is a reminder I need to hear daily.

Perhaps even if I could do very well without it, the world is quite necessary to me.

Lightly,
Leah