My first couple weeks living alone I struggled with what felt, physically and emotionally, very much like… withdrawals. It was puzzling, and I rode it out confident that all such things pass with time. I practiced good practices, treated myself with compassion, and sort of … kept an eye on it, from the perspective of a lifetime living in this fragile vessel, and a certain wonder… somewhere between “omfg – what’s wrong now??’ and ‘huh, this is sort of odd’. It did pass, and my heart settled down with settling into new routines. Yesterday, I realized more fully what was driving those sensations, that experience of ‘withdrawal’, and had to admit with some amusement that it was an experience only the digital age could produce…loss of near-continuous communication through digital media of a variety of sorts. Living in my own space now, there is simply less back and forth delivery of words…words about packages, about picking up things from the store, about arrival times here or there, about delays in this or that, expectation setting words in a household of multiple adults… it initially created a feeling of isolation and sometimes of loneliness to lose all that. That, too, passed.

Yesterday, I was enjoying the day on this entirely other level, something I haven’t felt in a very long time. A decade or more, maybe – certainly something that precedes all existing/recent romantic or sexual relationships, until yesterday. The feeling got my attention – I had missed it, I know, because I felt that thought pretty early in the day. “I’ve missed this!” as I smiled through my morning. “I’ve missed this!” as I walked to work. It nagged at me; I didn’t have the words for what I was feeling. Something like happy, something like eager… something with a connection…something with power and delight… present, aware, self-assured, confident… and less about an event or experience I have already had – more about something I might experience soon. I felt it in my skin, in my smile, in the colors of the day…

Sometimes the path is not obvious.

I’m not sure I have all the right words for it, even now. I have some words, though. I got my “juice” back. I know, I know… how helpful is that? Not very. Still, it’s a start. I even ‘get it’ – technology took my juice when it put real-time communication in my hands, during a relationship with someone willing to use it nearly continuously. Habits develop over time, and whatever we practice becomes part of who we are. Over the years I got used to constant check-ins, updates, and expectation-setting real-time, even developing skill at and preference for deeply emotional conversations via email…and lost my ‘juice’. I lost the delight and intensity of anticipation. I lost the utter confidence in someone else’s affection. I began to rely on continuous reassurance and trickling information on tap. It became a character flaw.

Enjoying a busy work day wedged between a delightful evening with a wanderer, and a delightful evening with my traveling partner, and not hearing from either during the day, I realized I didn’t need any additional communication – I was enjoying the anticipation of our next meeting, our future time together, other days, other nights, other dinners, other dips in the pool, other laughter… and I was reminded how much I once thrived with the yearning and anticipation that filled my days before email, before instant messaging, and before smart phones. Oh, I’m not setting aside my pocket brain – I rely on my smart phone quite a lot, and the technology delights me, too – but I am suddenly free of the attachment to the faux connection of continuous near-real-time communication. In letting it go…I got my ‘juice’ back. Fueled by anticipation, by desire, by joy – the very real joy of real connections, with conversation, eye contact, and touch, and the very real desire to feel those things again, without the methadone of less satisfying digital connections, I created the very real excitement of anticipation, and the mammalian urgency to connect, to touch, to talk. There’s power in real. I enjoyed a fantastic day.

I love digital media for connecting across miles, and years. I wouldn’t give up Facebook unless something came along that connects me with faraway friends more efficiently – but the here and now of love and lust are damaged by continuous pinging, and the badminton of trivial words. I get it. As much as anything, this is a thank you note to the wanderer and my traveling partner. I am free! 🙂 I am also laughing – it’s perhaps just a bit silly to celebrate something so small as such a big deal…only…this is a wonderful state of being, and I do love it. The excitement of yearning, of anticipating, of daydreaming…without the insecurity of ‘hasn’t gotten back to me yet’ is really quite deliciously lovely.

Thanks guys, I’ll be pinging on you a lot less. I get it, now. Thanks for the run way lights. I landed safely on the tiny private island of my own ‘now’, in my own experience. ❤