Arms Wide Open
An astrologist informed me a few months ago that my “Saturn would soon be transiting” and that over the next few years, I should expect to change a lot. Despite being someone who only believes in horoscopes when they serve my purposes, I was still motivated to ask for a sneak peak into my future.
“That’s not how this shit works,” my friend said, clearly a little offended. “But, I can tell you that your relationships are going to change: Some will stay with you, some will leave you.” I stared at him blankly, unsure if I was supposed to interpret this entirely obvious statement as some sort of secret cosmic insight. In the end, I squinted my eyes slightly and delivered my tried and true non-answer, “I think you might be onto something there…”
My relationships are changing, and I’ve written about some of those changes before, but they’re not changing in the black and white fashion the astrologist alluded to. Some of my relationships are becoming more and more intimate. I’m not talking about sex at all, I’m referring to an intesified feeling of emotional attachment with other adults that I’m not related to.
As I’ve learned since moving to LA, making non-professional friends as an adult requires a set of skills and approach that is different from anything I have previously encountered. Generally speaking, the older we get, the less motivated we are to meet and invest in new people— we have less time, competing priorities, optics to maintain, past trauma to manage, and we are more inclined to operate from a space of self-protection.
And so, as I sought to make friends, I knew that there was no way I could satisfy all of those psychological needs, and more, for each individual I met. But what I could do was to operate in such a way where if someone was open to making a new friend, then they could find evidence for which to give me the benefit of the doubt. To do that, I had to allow myself, and the things that made me feel vulnerable, to be seen by strangers— and then trust that, no matter what happened, I’d be ok.
If you’re curious about what that’s like, I can tell you that it’s not comfortable; but, as I learned from doing yoga, discomfort is not the same as pain, and if you can tolerate the discomfort, you will grow.
In my case, the growth manifested itself in many ways, but the one I’m most proud of is in my resilience inside of relationships. All relationships— platonic, romantic, professional, and “other”— take work. They require us to endure indignities, repair injuries, and to find reasons to stick with each other. This is exhausting, and I definitely questioned why I was doing it and if it was worth it; especially because I didn’t really have any reason for knowing any of these people!
And therein exists the irony and the surprise: My most intimate relationships are with people for whom I had no expectations or desired point of arrival. We just kept at it, and somewhere along our free dive into the depths of each other, I achieved a stillness in which I became aware of my presence, and present in my awareness.
In these moments, it feels as if we are one.
I know now, that this is my why.
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA
December 2019