Thank you for sharing your experience, 3D Student. :)
I've had a similar one before, about a year ago now - I was feeling extremely lonely, I had broken up for the last time with my partner of five years the December before this, and I was in the process of letting go of someone else I had feelings for but could not be with. I had my friend over (Etro, on the forum) while going through all of this emotional stuff, what I can only describe as a cosmic loneliness - thinking that I'd never find a partner compatible with me and my values, and trying to remind myself that I don't need such a companion to be happy, that I had friends like Etro and Guille. I felt even worse for feeling so terrible and helpless in the first place, instead of being stronger and having more control over my emotions. We were smoking cannabis at the time (I've since kicked the habit completely, thankfully) and I was venting how I felt, and I cried so much - I eventually started laughing madly while crying and felt a huge surge of emotions flowing out of me as I tried to understand what I was going through and why - to learn my lessons from it. It was very intense. What's funny is cannabis usually buffers or dulls the emotions, but in this instance it seemed to aid in releasing them, yet I'm not sure (and I am not endorsing or condoning using it, especially for this purpose).
Throughout the experience I kept asking myself "What's the point of all this? What is the point of all this pain and loneliness? Why does my knowledge, although elevating me and enriching my life, separate me so much from others that I feel I'll never find the right partner to share my life with? Why do I even care about this? What am I missing?"
3D Student said:
It's funny how when you ask a sincere question, it comes to you, either in thought, dreams, or life experiences.
What's even more interesting is that a few days after this experience, feeling as hopeless as I did at the time, I accepted an invitation from Puck to go meet him for the first time in Central Park. He wanted to get together, talk, hang out, and he also gave me a bunch of books. There was a part of me that kept thinking "what's the point of going?" and another that said "why should I let my despair stop me from having a new experience or meeting someone new?" So I went. Long story short, Puck and I have been together ever since, and I've grown so much as a person (and so has he).
After processing the event and finding closure, I realized the universe was teaching me to
let go - to not attach myself to anyone or anything - to not
need anyone to feel whole or complete. Going through that despair cleared all of the debris away and opened a path for me to start over, to meet someone new, and that life experience - because of the choice I made to just take a chance and see where it would go - has literally placed me into a new reality, one in which I am far happier and healthier, overall, than I was before.
It reminds me of these lines from the famous Sufi poet Rumi, who I was reading frequently at the time:
Sorrow prepares you for joy.
It violently sweeps everything out of your house,
so that new joy can find space to enter.
It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart,
so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place.
It pulls up the rotten roots,
so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow.
Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart,
far better things will take their place.
