Last Christmas I was really annoyed by the insensitivity of the advert that used Queen’s Find me somebody to love as its theme. I know it was actually about us loving our high street, our local shopkeepers, and I get that. But it was Christmas, a time when a lot of people feel more alone and unloved than ever. And maybe I was one of them. Maybe that was why I ended up hating that advert.
When we feel alone and not wanting to be so, then we do offer up (or out) that prayer (request to the universe). I suspect most people have done a version of it at some point in their life, whether as a frightened child, a lonely teenager, a heartbroken betrayed, a grief-stricken bereaved, or maybe even as a staying-put-but-even-so-hopeful-for-change stoic. I wonder though, how closely we listen to the answer.
Whether you talk to a god, or to spirit, or to the universe, or whether you’re really just asking the question to hear your own answer to it (which are pretty much all the same thing in my opinion), there is no point asking a question or lodging a request unless you wait to the hear the answer.
The last time I sent out a version of that prayer to the universe, I heard this: I am sending you the people you need, in the order that you need them.
Well, I supposed it was a kinder response than “you’re not ready yet” and it did make me think about the people who have showed up in my life in recent years. Some of them were here already, but not all of those who were already in my life, have showed up since. You find out who your friends are when you need to know. And others have stepped in, or stepped forward, or stepped up.
This isn’t the place to name names…but I did think about it and this is what I saw...
The true friends who helped me do what needed to be done, and didn’t say all the right things because they know how I am with words and would have picked them apart and probably thrown them back, but were just there, where I needed them to be, travelling to spend time with me, dropping out of work to support me, making the calls I couldn’t make, making me laugh at the most inappropriate moments, and letting me cry. When I look back on it, not a single one of them gave me a single word of advice. Not a single one of them questioned any of my actions. They weren’t uncomfortable, uncertain, or unwilling. They just were who they had always been. They were just there.
Then there were the people who were there because I needed to work. I needed to keep my brain occupied in something other than my self and my life. I needed to get out and be with people and write boring mundane technical stuff that would be useful rather than beautiful. Some of these were cornerstones in my life already; some were on the periphery and stepped forward; others stepped in out of nowhere. Their function was to give me work and pay me for it and give me back a greater sense of my more whole self, of my wider place in the world.
Some of those are still here; others not so much. It’s all good.
Then there was someone who turned out to be not who I thought they were, or not who they pretended to be, or maybe who just got it as wrong as I did. They were there because I needed to be held and cherished and not to put too fine a point on it I needed to be…well, you get the drift. He held me together for a while, reminded me what joy felt like for a while, but it became evident that the shape he was holding me in was all wrong, twisted, tensioned. We dreamed and made plans and…maybe we were both…and maybe we were neither…but either way, he then tore me apart. Completely, utterly, devastated me. I no longer knew who or what I was crying for, because everything was gone and nothing was left and there was no point to anything anymore. Including me.
Then there was someone else again. Were they already in my life, or did I seek them out? Depends how you look at it. Anyway, this poor soul had me show up and dump this whole heap of a fragmented life, a shattered, gritty, overwhelming mess of tiny shards, not guaranteed to be all there and no pattern to work from, into their lap with a plea of “fix this!”
I think that for a while they were also there to keep me busy while I was running the sub-processes to work through the stuff I didn’t want to watch happening on the main screen. To encourage me to check back now and then to make sure that the process was still running in the background and doing what it needed to be doing and checking on the run-time. It is still running. I can’t read the “time remaining” box or the “percentage complete” box, but I think it now has a message saying you will not need to re-do from start when this process is complete, it will fire automatically.
They are still here, and I have no idea why, but I’m hoping they’ll stick around.
As that process got under way and I was being encouraged / helped / supported / something’d to figure out who I was now and who I was becoming, someone else stepped in out of nowhere. No, not out of nowhere. Out of the wonderful community of writers who are trying to get their own stories down. Something I said had resonated and they tracked me down to say so. Their function in my life – and mine in theirs – is to re-affirm that we are writers. We got this. We can do this. Differently. We’re very different people writing very different things, but we got this! And we have somewhere to safely say I don’t think I have, you know… That is also important. I may never meet this person, but that feels kind of irrelevant.
In amongst all of this there was someone else, whose purpose in my life I really struggled to understand. In practical terms they were supportive…but emotionally, they were a drain. Most often after time with them I felt worse about myself, worse about the world, and to be honest worse about them. I didn’t think I could help them any more than they were helping me – for all they claimed otherwise. I now know that their function in my life has been to make me face up to what it is I am really afraid of…essentially of becoming them, of not letting go of past hurts, and not living a joyful life, and ending up in the future that they see for both of us, but that I whole-heartedly reject. Not all of life’s lessons are easy or pleasant.
There is a saying that no-one leaves you until you have learned what they were sent to teach…but there is no rule that says they must leave at that point. Sometimes they get to stick around to celebrate it with you. Sometimes what they have to teach evolves alongside your own growth. Sometimes the dynamics shift and you can start to wonder not only why they have been sent into your life, but why you have been sent into theirs.
For all I know the universe may still be thinking she’s not ready for whatever it has planned for me, but at least I now know it’s thinking about it, and in the meantime sending me some beautiful people, some of whom are passing through, some of whom I hope will stay for a while, some of whom I trust will never leave.
