Making the Space for Love (Lesson 7)

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I have never felt more on my own.

But I also feel the peace I prayed for, and I am deeply grateful.

I wasn’t sure I had space for Lesson 7

Lesson 7 is about making room.

In theory, I’m all in.

I completely agree with Katherine that “we all must master the ability to release who we are for the possibility of who we might become.”

In practice, I’m kinda meh.

The thing is, I have done this before. (Don’t worry, I’ll stop saying that soon.)

I know it is smart to have a living space that welcomes company and a schedule that allows for flexibility.

But I am not currently willing to change much about my home or my calendar.

It is not physically possible for me to rearrange the furniture in my studio apartment, and with closet and dresser space at a premium, I’m not inclined to leave anything empty for the sake of symbolism.

When my partner gets here, if he wants to move in—which he won’t, because it’s a studio—we’ll deal with that then.

As for how I spend my time, I actually do leave lots of space for new experiences; I’m just not ready for dating to be one of them.

There is definitely space in my heart

I know that Paul is gone.

I felt it fully yesterday, but just to confirm, I woke up crying with the heart pain.

(Gah, I hate to confess that. It sounds so lame.)

Fortunately, I knew what to do.

First I moped juuuust long enough to watch 90 minutes of TV. (Sunday morning is the new Saturday Night Live!)

Then I gave myself a talking-to. (Self, you cannot just lie in this bed all day. I’m sorry you are hurting, but, just, no.)

Then I sat on the couch and sobbed my way through a spirit guide meditation.

Oh my god am I grateful for my spirit guides. They give me sooooo much goodness. I wish it made sense for me to copy/paste everything they said this morning, but it doesn’t, so I’ll settle for sharing their closing remarks:

“You did nothing wrong. Not a single thing. Your love is good and true and he was worthy, as are you. Your time together is not yet finished but it is unknown and at present it is void. You do not need to understand. You do need your energy to be clear.”

Dang, right? “At present it is void.”

That word, “void,” was particularly deliberate, so much so that I looked it up. And indeed.

Right now, whatever Paul and I might have is empty, unoccupied, and the opposite of legally binding.

Noted.

So after that meditation I moved down to my cushion and cleared my energy, and then I went to church and praised god and sang my heart out, and then I came home and got to work.

Lesson 7 in practice

Eventually, I cleaned my closet.

This was my compromise with Lesson 7’s assignment.

Because, as previously mentioned, I’m not really looking to make changes to my home at the moment.

As I explained in my journal:

No, my home is not welcoming to a partner right now. It looks like a therapist threw up in here. It’s a nest, a den, a cocoon. It’s a womb. And I do not have a twin.

(The reference to therapist vomit is an allusion to the affirmations I’ve scrawled in dry-erase marker all over my bathroom walls, as well as to the inspirational quotes that are part of Lesson 5’s “vision collage.”)

But even amid my personal space, I could use more space. And I’ve been meaning to sort through my clothing for a while now.

So I set a goal of discarding 20 items, and by the time I was finished, I’d nixed 35.

The process felt empowering. I was clearing out for my own purposes, and I took satisfaction from tossing things that reminded me too much of the past.

But in the spirit of Lesson 7, I did consider that, by decreasing the amount of clothing I own, I am also making it easier to pack up and move somewhere else down the road.

And if anyone does want to spend some extended time with me at my current home, there are now a handful of empty hangers…

Love > fear,

Christina

Want to know what happens next? Proceed to Chapter 8.

Missed what happened before? Go back to Chapter 6, or start from the beginning.