It’s been such a very strange couple weeks – the first spent kicking and bucking against being alone, being ill. The second just existing with some new, or if not new then conscious, thoughts, and just letting myself mooch around and sleep and be (with a few different interludes into things I had to get done but not so many of those).

My list of realisations:

a) The first difficult thing is to realize that really we are always alone. When the shit hits the fan, when the numbers come in, when your number is up, there aint no one going to be there with you. People can help you, make you feel better, make you feel like you have some support, but really they have their own lives and their own concerns, and your life aint one of them, their lives will always come first. You have to do whatever helps you cope with this fact, and I handle it in my own way, (my indpendence) that might not be everyone’s way but then they are not me.
b) This is what my dad knew, and I WISH I’d been more mature to handle all that stuff going on and just be there every time he needed me to be at the end. I’ll always regret that I was not. But I was there as much as I could be, and I do think I’ve made my peace with him about it and hopefully learnt from it.
c) I am ok by myself, a lot of people aren’t and can’t be and those are the ones always in a relationship. I need my own space even when I am in one, and I’d need to find someone who can handle that. They, so far, seem few and far between. I have this strange mixture of being extremely caring and nurturing to those I love, and being a bitch from hell who just wants to be alone and can be really selfish and mean if I cant be. That’s me, and at this point I can’t change myself nor should I want to. I’ve always been like that.
d) I do have to love and accept all those things about me, even the ‘bad’ things like that realization above. In fact they are not bad, because I’m a person and I’m not bloody perfect. The trick is liking the things that aren’t so great about myself as well as liking those things that are (and remembering the things that are because half the time I forget them all and am very critical of myself).
e) I need, and want, to find someone else who can do the same, and if I can’t then I’m going to be by myself and need to love those things about myself anyway so better start now!
f) Love is not about being perfect, not about loving this perfect mythical person. Actually it’s about knowing the imperfections and loving those as much as what are great in a person.
g) I think I knew this already but had forgotten, I’ll try to remember it more often.
h) I am lucky, I have my imagination and my experiences, more experiences than a lot of people ever have. I can sit down and write and be back in any of those places I’ve been, or want to be, I can transport myself and weave tales around those things, and that is a great thing to be able to do because it means I’m always able to go somewhere, meet someone, be something else in my head. I can exist with my imagination. How can I be lonely when I have that, and maybe so many of those who fear being alone don’t have it.
i) Lastly, I really am dog tired of looking out for this person that is magically going to make me happy. I accept that the only person who can make me happy is me, and I can do that without anyone else around. It seems that this is my life, my path, my thing, to be by myself and to get to this place where I am ok about it. I really am going to stop looking (not hoping because I don’t need to, hope keeps me going, hope is always there, hope is beautiful and luckily I am an optimistic person who thinks that you just never know).
j) On the above point, I ‘hope’ I’m finally getting there.

To finish off with, to make me chuckle when I come back to read all these profound thoughts, I look like a hamster right now. I have two big red cheeks, the right hand one now a lot bigger than the left hand one, and they kind of hurt when I eat or when the painkillers wear off. I am sleeping a lot and in between reading and writing and I’ve been walking around my flat a bit like a sleepwalker who has to go back to sleep every few hours. Considering this, I think I handled these last weeks pretty well. Next week it’s back to the real world and I’ll wish I was back here again with all this time to think and drive myself crazy! ;)