Lessons in Learning How to Rest, Part Seven.

Lesson Seven: Don't get stuck in the moment. This too shall pass. 

Remember how I said earlier this year that I'm cutting all the chatter? Well, sometimes the chatter will all but scream at you. I have learned, however, that you don't have to listen to it or let it effect you. Seems like everyone I run into these days (acquaintance, friend, stranger, you name it!) has an opinion on my love life. My everyday life seems to be in order, according to everyone with a mouth, but my love life is clearly in arrears.

Strangers have told me not to give up on love. The other day my chiropractor announced out of nowhere that he's getting me ready for matrimony by correcting my posture. (Nobody loves a hunchback!) Friends from all corners of the world have told me that I need to start dating men, not boys. (As if I'd known those other guys would turn out to be emotionally stunted jerkfaces.) My mother thinks the last guy could still pull it together and morph into my happily ever after. And others think my Prince Charming is just 'round the bend. (If this is true, I'm worried he's a little stupid and can't figure how to make right turns. He should be here by now!)

The only chatter I've heard lately that makes sense to me, the only words that have resonated in my very being, have been these: This too shall pass. 

I was plagued for days this week with a feeling that made me want to crawl under the covers of my bed and not come out until someone checked my closet for The Boogeyman. The feeling was awful. I felt like I was being chased by it. And I couldn't figure out what it was or why it was haunting me until I met up with a friend for one of our Skype dates. As we were talking, the truth, that unidentified feeling, came to the surface. I was sad. I was sad about getting repeatedly kicked in the teeth by love. And I had been hiding it under layers of optimism and big ideas for the business and other parts of my life in hopes that it would eventually dissipate. I was also tired. Tired of dating idiots, boys, whatever you wanna call them. I was tired of feeling bad about myself. I was tired of still caring about these guys who don't really care about me as much as they care about themselves. I was tired of apologizing for feeling the way I do and not having it all together as per my usual. And, lastly, I was tired of waiting for Mr. Right.

The thing about feelings is they don't go away until you confront them, head on, grab them by the horns and stare them straight in the eyes. And so she let me cry big crocodile tears with her via Skype. (Not too unlike a few nights before when I sobbed to my best friend for reasons I wasn't entirely sure of yet.) And while she said a lot of things that night, the advice that stuck with me was to not get stuck in the moment, because as awful as it was it would pass. And while I'm still living out the last bits of this moment, I know in my heart my friend is right. I can't get stuck here. It will pass...

Lessons in Learning How to Rest, Part Six.

Lesson Six: He said. She said. Cut the chatter.

When I was a little girl I liked to pretend that I was the CEO of a company on the verge of a hostile take-over. I would hold multiple conference calls all day, shouting orders to lower level employees about how "this" was a rush and "that" had to get done by the end of the work day. My favorite part of the fantasy was the conference calls with multiple people where we all dispensed our wisdom on the subject at hand. I had watched my dad hold a number of professional phone calls as a kid, memorizing his every gesture. So, I knew exactly what to say to my imaginary conversational counterparts. Ah yes, conference calls were the best!

Now, however, my life has become one giant conference call. All day long my phone lights up while simultaneously making noise notifying me of the hundreds of people waiting to have a conversation in about fifty different ways. And I have no one to blame but myself for the constant barrage of communication. I wanted it. I was convinced that I needed it. My daily dose of advice, input, the constant clicking of tongues.

I realized this week that my childhood fantasy of talking all day long had become a nightmare. There was no light at the end of the tunnel that constantly reverberated with the hum of a million voices. No peaceful land in sight away from the white noise of conversing. And while my dad taught me the art of making a well delivered phone call, he also gave me good advice last year: "Stop listening to what everyone else has to say and just do whatever it is that YOU wanna do. Cut out the constant chatter, kid." 

So, I finally decided to take his advice this week. One year later, but I'm taking it nonetheless! I've ruthlessly stopped returning phone calls. I answer only the necessary emails in short and concise sentences that don't signal a reply. I've banished my phone to silent mode and have started leaving it in other rooms of the house, out of earshot. I've turned off. I've shut down. I've cut it all out. And I've come to a conclusion: I've known what to do all along, but stubbornly insisted on hearing everyone else out first. I don't need to have endless phone calls day and night in order to make the right decisions for me. But I do need to take a serious break from all the chatter.