Contact
ooh la~la~Lisa and her cute colorful hair, kodak ls753
I had another epiphany today while I met my friend (my hair colorist extraordinaire) Lisa, for coffee this morning. I need more human contact!!!
I spend a lot of my days up in my studio, with my kitties, music and art supplies. Every now and then I'll check my email, or read my favorite blogs, comment and try to respond to my comments. I'll go to the ymca or to the beach for a good workout but even then, I have my iPod in ears and am not wanting to be social.
As I have said before...most of my tribe is all over the states (and globe) but I have a few wonderful girlfriends out here that I really need to nurture and spend personal~contact time with. They are both two busy creative bees as well.
I drove away from my coffee date with lovely Lisa and realized how uplifted I felt. Just looking across the table to her eyes and touching her hand and hugging her hello and goodbye was so refreshing to me. A few minutes into my car and my other local girlfriend Carey called. We also acknowledged our need for girl time together.
I find that it is easy for me to withdraw from being social when I am going through a tough time or have a lot on my mind. Being outside at a coffee shop, exchanging thoughts and laughter with a girlfriend and people watching made me feel more alive today.
Andrea shares somewhat similar feelings about how getting out expands her world here.
So Lisa and I declared to have a once a week coffee date (although next week we're substituting coloring my hair!!) and Carey is coming over next week to play with my pastels.
Also, my best frister, Suz is coming into town this week for a few days.
Amazing when you become aware of something you need and you send that need into the Universe and it comes pouring in. I know this doesn't always happen...but when it does...I feel so jazzed!!
posted by boho girl at 13.3.06
10 Comments:
I can relate to this entirely! I turn into such an art-hermit, or writing-hermit, and it'll be going along fine like that for a while and then bam! I need to get out! Need humans! I'm lucky to share my studio with my artist-husband, but we still get awfully cooped up. Have to force ourselves to go out and be "normal people". Also, many of my friends are scattered, like yours, which makes it hard sometimes. But I have enough local friends that this is no excuse!!
I can totally relate to too much alone time. Even if it is spent doing something you love, it can get to you. Sometimes I find myself reluctant to leave my studio and get out and connect, explore...something!
I am glad that you are getting your needs met, feeling the love and support of those around you, and hopefully far from you too. Female bonding is an amazing and beautiful thing.
Love you.
XOXOXOXO-Leth
I sooo know what you mean!! Most of my human contact isn't human at all. It's with a 4 pound Chi. ^..^
Tell Suz hello and give her a warm fuzzy from me. I adore you!
i know this feeling well. and i am so glad that you are connecting with people in this way. the human contact, person to person, comes in many ways. and sometimes you need a hug and a touch from someone who gets you.
I find that I am around people much of the day during the week but they aren't kindred souls and so often it is like being alone even surrounded by others. *sigh* I do indeed relate to this need and we must honor and feed it with souls that make our hearts leap.
yay!
i'm happy for you...
i kind of pull into myself also
especially when feeling stressed
or anxious about something...
and
then it always surprises
how much i need my friends...
glad to hear that you are
connecting
:)
I can so relate...I came to exactly the same conclusion...I need to meet people where I'm at! I miss that sense of connection and getting out of my own head.
I love reading your blog--I always feel uplifted afterwards. Can I just live here? :)
Denise,I loved your blog this week. It reminds me of a story about an astronaut a friend of mine told. In his story the astronaut is wearing a suit that keeps him alive by recycling his fluids. In the story the astronaut is working on a space station when an accident takes place, and he is cast into space to orbit the Earth, to spend the rest of his life circling the globe by himself in his super space suit.
My friend says this story is how he imagines hell, a place where a person is completely alone, without others and without God. After my friend told me about his story, I kept seeing it in my mind. I thought about it before I went to sleep at night. I imagined myself looking out my little bubble helmet at blue earth, reaching towards it, closing it between my puffy white space-suit fingers, wondering if my friends were still there. In my imagination I would call out to them, yell for them, but the sound would only come back loud within my helmet. Through the years my hair would grow long in my helmet and gather around my forehead and touch my face with my hands to move my hair out of my eyes, so my view of earth, slowly, over the first two years, would dim to only a thin light through a curtain of thatch and beard.
I would lay there in bed thinking about my friend's story, putting myself out there in the black. And there came a time, in space, when I could not tell whether I was awake or asleep. All my thoughts mingled together because I had no people to remind me what was real and what was not real. I would punch myself in the side to feel pain, and this way I could be relatively sure I was not dreaming. Within ten years I was beginning to breathe heavy through my hair and my beard as they were pressing tough against my face and begun to curl into my mouth and up my nose. In space, I forgot that I was human. I did not know whether I was a ghost or an apparition or a demon thing.
After I thought about my friend's story, I lay there in bed and wanted to be touched, wanted to be talked to. I had the terrifying thought that something like that might happen to me. I thought it was just a terrible story, a painful and ugly story. My friend had delivered as accurate a description of hell as could be calculated. And what is sad, what is very sad, is that we are proud people, and because we have sensitive egos and so many of us live our lives in front of our televisions, not having to deal with real people who might hurt or offend us, we float along on our couches like astronauts moving aimlessly through the Milky Way, hardly interacting with other human beings at all.
My friend's story frightened me so badly I emailed another friend (I'll call her 'D'). 'D' is who I call when I'm thinking too much. She knows this sort of thing. It was late, but I asked her if I could bend her ear. She said yes. I looked out my window and noticed that there were lots of people outside, but none of them were talking to each other. Anyway... 'D' greeted me with love and a smile. We hung out for a while and made small talk. It was so nice to have another human talking with me. She had stories that she told of her family and of her 'exotic' life. I listened so hard because I felt like, while she was telling stories, she was massaging my soul, letting me know I was not alone, that I will never have to be alone, that there are friends and family and churches and coffee shops. I was not going to be cast into space.
Loneliness is something that happens to us, but I think it is something we can move ourselves out of. I think a person who is lonely should dig into a community, give himself/herself to a community, humble himself before his friends, initiate community, teach people to care for each other, love each other. I don't think God wants us floating in space or sitting in front of our televisions. He probably wants us interacting, eating together, laughing together, praying together. Loneliness is something that came from a dark place. If loving other people is a bit of heaven, then certainly isolation is a bit of hell, and to that degree, here on earth, we decide in which state we would like to live.
girls are the best. i couldn't make it without 'em!!!! finding girls locally isn't easy, but i have managed here pretty well. small towns make it so much easier i think. expand your girls if you can. gather them round you tight. have you thought about hosting a group of some kind once as month in the evenings to talk about art or something? sometimes you can find your people that way. i met most of my local girls at yoga, then we just started forming all sorts of things: tuesday lunch at the dream castle, playing with glass and pottery, riding horses, etc. and we get together for wine night at least every two weeks! priceless...
love you, sister, wish we were closer...
i totally hear you on this! my friends are scattered, though i barely make enough time to see the wonderful friends i have here. i've had the last week completely free - no work, no "to do" list, but i've successfully holed myself up in our home doing art. i've had to force myself out the door and into the real world!! but you're right, once you get the dose of good girl time, it all falls into place. love how that happens!
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