What is a soul?

It feels like it used to be that almost every time I met someone social media was the main method of contact; even email was not so commonly exchanged as a way for people to stay in touch. Now it seems that everybody gives their phone number and I wonder if I missed some shift in how people communicate or even if that’s just happening to me. I never used to pay much attention to my phone contacts list (partly because my contacts eould always disappear when I got a new phone).

I got a really nice request today, “can we talk sometime?” after sharing that I was lonely; I said sure and gave him my number, and he said “yay I need a friend too.” It is nice when it is that easy but the truth is I am also sooo terrified of more personal connections, scared of so many things, and I don’t exactly know where to begin developing my muscles for sharing and being with others. I feel like such a mess, too much of a mess, and I tell myself it always goes wrong so why even try… but I also don’t want to feel exposed, to be a vulnerable mess up in front of others, to feel all my suppressed feelings so much more, my sense of foundationlessness and lack of safety and… I feel like too much and not enough.

Little affirmations I get from others help me to not be afraid of deeper connections and starting to reveal parts of myself again but the truth is I have been afraid for a really long time. I wish making friends didn’t require talking; I’d like someone to just go to a movie with or read with, to hang out with without necessarily saying much at all, but then how do I find someone whose energy I feel comfortable around? I guess I take it little steps at a time… I am stuck in a shell but little bits of appreciation I get, so much better than criticism and hatred, help me start to come out of it… help me slowly to realize my aloneness is a story and not necessarily true.

I feel like a failure, I feel weak, I feel lacking in integrity, I feel… well, there is nothing like having your soul stomped out again and again till you have nothing left in you for finding out what you’re made of and in my case right now that feels like so little. I need a way perhaps for a dam to burst in my heart and to really feel what I am feeling and to feel safe feeling it. I hate feeling numb, especially in my heart; it leads to boredom which leads to agitation which leads to depression and every not so nice thought about myself. It is surprising to me that anybody would want to get to know me. It is maybe actually scarier for me to meet someone over coffee (or in my case some kind of yummy juice or smoothie or boba) than to invite someone to go on some kind of vacation with me. Of course I need to have a good intuitive sense about a person (right now making the slightest connection is kind of terrifying) but my kind of getting to know someone is showing them places I have loved or exploring new places together; just spending time together and seeing what unfolds. I’m not open to it; I can tell when kindness happens to me and I become slightly more receptive; but I think maybe if I were ready for that kind of connection it would happen?

I don’t know myself at all and that is scary. The most frequent feedback I get is thanking me for my honesty and vulnerability but who is in there doing the being vulnerable? What does it even mean to be a person? To have a heart? Is my heart beating with all the others in the world and is there a sort of magic to that? How much of my hopes and dreams for my life do I need to let go of to see myself clearly as I really am? I think I hope and dream and expect too much and a part of me gets really irritated at the meditation instruction to accept everything as it is and I guess that is where opening and release happens but I’m the furthest thing from being able to do that right now. My heart isn’t telling me very much at all. I think of all that I suffered through for so many years and part of me asks why? Why did it have to be so hard! It feels so unnecessary to have gone through that, but at the same time, I wonder, if I don’t get depressed and feel defeated these days, am I hoping for too much, bound for disappointment? It is hard to believe in the case of my life that ‘everything happens for a reason’. At least right now.

I feel so inadequate. It is hard to understand people who are not freaked out and oppressed by how nasty, British and short life is. I guess you have to have a sense of humour but you need places to express that humour, too. When my heart opens all can change as far as my perspective but my heart doesn’t really want to do that right now. I ask, what is this thing in my chest they call a heart, what good is it, where can it lead me? There was always an enchanted wonder about that but now is it just this me hanical thing that pumps blood and… it is connections my heart makes that lead me to feel safe as opposed to so alienated as I have felt of late, and when you connect it can be like inexplicable magic, but right now I have no idea what to think of my heart and the place of hearts in general. I don’t want to be pessimistic, but it is really hard for me to meditate and feel committed to the practice right now, like what’s the point, life is going to pass me by anyway.

I do not necessarily feel lately like my heart has intelligence, or that I have a soul: though I won’t stop searching for it, I can’t find it. What is a soul? How do I know I have one? I’m afraid I am more like a piece of matter to be tossed around by the universe and I don’t even know how to talk about the point of having a universe. When I was younger science utterly fascinated me for similar reasons to why my host wrote his book on the origin of the universe: if you start to think about it, how can you not be in absolute awe about the universe we find ourselves in? I am aware of how incredible existence is, just having a lot of trouble trusting life, and trusting that good healing things might happen to me. Oh, yeah, the way the universe works is incredible, but if there is no point to it, that makes my heart jump for joy in relation, what is the point? This ennui feels so powerful and like it is the ultimate truth and it is hard to feel like, even if my heart melts and I am able to find purpose and wonder in life again, it could be that I am fooling myself in that, and this blah I feel is the more truthful orientation to life…