Dennis On: "This is For All The Lonely People..."

This is For All The Lonely People...

I suppose it would be easy to label the downside of breaking free of religious dogma, drama, misinformation and imaginary outcomes as "the Dark Side" of the process, but perhaps it is simply "The Other Side."  

Being out of the group, while liberating, can be one of the most lonely journeys in life you will ever go on.  While there are great gains to be recognized, there are also many losses.  We lose most of our friends who were friends because of the tie that bound us.  To sing, "Blessed Be the Tie That Binds," in a crowd of thousands where we were under the illusion we were all bound together in the same one grand thing, was always emotional for me.  To sing, "God be with you til we meet again," as the last hymn at a festival site before heading back home to the real way it was would leave me teary yet hopeful.  

Just feeling safer knowing so many like minded people all over the world made living in the world easier somehow.  There was order.  Be here, be there, do this, do that set a framework upon which one could build the illusion of safety and harmony.  I can't say I don't miss it. 

I have always found that speaking one's feelings and sharing the stuff that lies deep within, while sometimes risky, most often is far from it.  All my ministerial career (is that the right word?) being ahead of my time, saying what my ministers friends often only thought or sharing thoughts and feelings deeply on a very practical level, were common observations about my "style."   It was not a style.  It was just me.

But what I found over and over again was that I was not alone in these thoughts, questions, observations or realizations.  Everyone was thinking on these things and just not sayin' nuttin'!  Oh sure, you had the oblivious and the suck ups, but most people simply sat on their feelings and doubts, or their hopes and dreams. Everyone down deep feels what we all feel and think we alone have cornered the market on that feeling, disappointment, loss or recognition.  It simply is not so.

 

I want to relate to all of us who just under the surface and for all our bluster, information, realizations and observations are simply lonely in this life.  One does not have to be alone to be lonely.  You truly can be lonely in a crowd.  I imagine many COG members understand this.  They stay because there is no emotional place to go and yet they are lonely to talk or express themselves or even lonely to disagree for once and not feel threatened by the higher ups that seem threatened by not all speaking the same one thing.  Speaking the same one thing is not the same as speaking the same right thing.

So let me begin. I consider this a form of personal therapy and yet know that the vast majority of us all completely understand it for ourselves.  While risky at times, self disclosure and sharing the stuff of life is still better than keeping it inside where eventually what eats you...eats you!

I have honestly never been more lonely in my life as I find myself now.  That loneliness has been costly.  It ruins relationships and sometimes makes one look in all the wrong places for a fix, no matter how temporary.  Being lonely is painful.  For me it causes both a conscious and subconscious anxiety.  It gives one too much time to ruminate about bad choices, good choices gone bad and what may or may not happen in the future.  Sometimes  you find yourself sitting alone in the dark with your dog talking to it and saying dumb stuff like, "well, here we are Chewy. Just you and me. Who would have guessed?"

One of the lessons lonely leaves you with is that if you depends on others to make you happy or give you meaning, the Karma Fairy will have to make a visit and straighten you out on that.  I have deeply depended on others to make me feel fulfilled, alive and loved.  The problem is that if we allow others, even jobs and churches to "make us happy," or to fill that void left by loneliness, they have the power to take it away overnight, and they do.  It's why I study the fine art of acceptance and forgiveness now.  These are two things I never had to do when everything was just fine.

While I recognize that "If you understand, then things are as they are.  If you don't understand then things are as they are," is true, it still is a lonely road when what is sucks or appears to at the moment.

Loneliness shows.  It manifests in the inability to get out and fix it because at times we have to be careful what we wish for.  Loneliness has made me moody and distracted from necessary pursuits.  It has also left me very distrustful and at times with the feeling of just killing time  until it's over.  Loneliness gives too much time to the critical voice in the head that loves to rub it in.

Perhaps Church and group think only mask loneliness?  Maybe one can be alone in a crowd.  Yes, of course they can.  I was often lonely as a minister because who do share expanded thinking with in the COG?  That was always a great formula for something bad to happen to you.  I find the same problem here with the school I teach at.  They don't listen and just as I could see with the Church and now again with this school, if they don't they won't be here in a couple years.  Is it so hard to see you can't disturb, disaffect, disillusion and dis-everything everyone and expect anything but a negative outcome?

Anyway, back to lonely.  One of the reasons I am lonely is because, try as I might, I still feel anger at a few specific life situations and people that is taking way too long to dissipate.  I accept responsibility for those I angered and this often leads me to tell myself that I don't deserve to be angry because I have angered others.  You know, Karma Fairy. But that thinking does not help.  In fact, it leaves me in limbo.  In my soul I know that anger serves me in no positive way. It changes nothing and like loneliness , shows too often and poisons the punch.  Intellectualizing about it doesn't release it anymore than sitting home alone cures loneliness, or at least takes the edge off.

Actually, perhaps the whole world is one big lonely planet.  We buy stuff to distract  us, eat ourselves into comfort and play endless video games into the wee hours of the morning to stop thinking about it.  "Gamers" are now an official cause of broken relationships and blood clots in the legs leading to stroke.   Distraction is not a cure for loneliness.  It merely postpones having to come to terms with what really makes one content.  "Happiness" seems like an illusion to me.  It is why, when sitting through the few services I could stomach in the new WCG, and happy singing and happy hand waving was introduced, I felt sick to my stomach.  It did not make me "happy."   Being "happy" about Jesus was just not going to work with who I am, what I know and where I want to be.  I guess lonely is going to go with my kind of temprement.  Actually I was told as about the only prophecy ever given me that was 100% true,

"Dennis, you outgrow your boxes quickly. Most people never look at the box they were born in.  You have two choices.  You can get back in the box you came from and make everyone happy. However, you will be on antidepressants the rest of your life.  Or you can leave the box you are now in, as you actually have.  But YOU WILL GO ALONE."

Truer words were never spoken to me.  Of all thing then...I had a feeling to turn around and look behind me in the grocery store awhile back.  You know, that feeling you get when you feel someone is looking at you.  It was my counselor who I had not seen since the day he told me of my journey.  He looked awful. He looked sad and very very lonely.  He perked up when I related how I had told most of the planet of his observation and that he had done many some good.  It was an odd experience.

Well, between "shut the hell up,"  (spoken by lonely pain bodies I know:), and this having the potential of getting too long, I admit I am very lonely.  While I will never give my brain to group think again, or feel comfy in a church of uneducated Bible readers who know the answer to everything, it's still lonely. The holidays don't seem to help and yet I find it doesn't seem to help many.  Everyone is scattered and we all are caught up in our dramas, hopes, dreams, fears and realities.  Perhaps the way we think or view things is our worst enemy.  I have to admit, I am not much of a one to apply "the Secret," and get the Jaguar of my dreams.   Simple works best for me.

So, this is for all the lonely people, thinking that time has passed them by.  This is for all the people in my past who came to me and sharing their own loneliness whether in a crowd or  at home alone.    I get it now!  I do understand. 

We used to say, "Experience is the best teacher, but the tuition is high."  Perhaps "Experience is the ONLY teacher. Everything else is hearsay."

Dennis C. Diehl
DenniscDiehl@aol.com