I am all alone. You don’t understand me. Nobody understands me. Saturday is Valentines day and I don’t have anyone. I am an outsider.
There is nothing funny about these thoughts. Right now hundreds of thousands of people are having these thoughts. For some this idea of being an outsider will look just like any other day, for some, unfortunately, the results will be very sad. I wish I could sit here and write the words which would release that pain, the feeling of being an outsider, someone who feels nobody really cares or understands. The best I can do is offer some truths as I know them about this empty feeling.
1) you would be hard pressed to find anyone who has not had these feelings, they are kind of a right of passage I guess.
2) this is no consolation.
What gets people over the hump, back to feeling part of things? Back to feeling like they matter? That relief will not come from another person, that relief will not come from a new job, a new house, a new car. Those are all things, and things go away, rust, change, disappear. No, the way back to feeling valued is to first value yourself. This idea of valuing yourself does not mean to make “them,” whoever “they” are wrong, and it does not mean making yourself wrong for feeling this way. What it does mean is recognizing you are part of a whole, and that whole could not exist were it not for you.
The idea I suggested in my most recent blog, making a holiday to honor ourselves could begin with you. Give yourself the hug you want, treat yourself to a special dinner, did someone say flowers? Why not. You are not an outsider, you are the creamy center of a delicious piece of chocolate.
I was recently given a quote from the mystic known as Rumi you might post on your wall as I have: You are not a drop in the ocean, you are the ocean in a drop.
