Breathing.

 There is a different feeling to alone. For a long time, I've known the difference between solitary which feels like it fills me up and alone. which doesn't. With grief a more constant companion, alone is harder at times. In this pandemic, solitary, ironically enough, just doesn't happen. 

Alone in my house is about feeling like I should answer the phone, talk to people, do things. There is no sense of being at one with the larger world only the jangling demands of the smaller one. 

Last weekend, I biked alone for a bit through a trail area up north. I stopped at an outcropping of land which hung over the transparently smooth water of a lake. I sat down, facing the water for a moment of peace. Took a deep breath, sighed and I felt it. A minute of the feeling of being a creature, really, at home in the wild. The kind of wild with nothing human, no other creatures for miles. Immediately interrupted by two other bikers. Transported back into a pretty spot on a lake. 

 There is no place that we have built as humans; no place like the truly wild places for making me feel my place and also, my place is right in the world. I fit.  I fit by breathing in the combination of ineffable loneliness and aloneness, feeling the breath in and out of my singular individual body as this place, this wild place lives, alive, in its own way. and I, for a single moment, get to be a part of it. 

It feels like I let this feeling in as this feeling seeks me out. Is it some ancient genetic program seeking the solace of what used to help? I felt as if energy or spirit has filled in a place inside I had forgotten about. 

That is what I need. Not want. Need.