This past fall I frequented the bosque, that enchanting gathering of cottonwoods that dance along the banks of the Rio Grande. It had been a difficult year, full of changes and the recurring struggle of seeing my worth. Earlier that year I had graduated college, had a falling out with a dear friend, and endured a brief period of brutal panic attacks. It had taken a while for me to feel like my feet were on solid ground again. One day I was on one of my walks, thinking about the new characters and callings that had found their way into my story, in spite of my recent sufferings. The yellow of autumn was setting the trees aflame, and through a cascade of leaves I could see the lavender-colored blotches that made up the distant Sandia mountains. Something bright caught my eye on one of the trees, and I stepped closer to see a lone cicada shell–a translucent exoskeleton blazing in the golden light. A little higher up the tree were more cicada shells, clinging to the tree in the same position, perfect fossils of their owners who were crawling about somewhere. My eyes floated to the other trees, where they beheld vast colonies, whole successions of lifeless skins climbing up trunks, extending onto branches. It intrigued me to think of how cicadas spend most of their lives in the darkness, crawling from the underworld as nymphs, only to re-emerge again with wings in their final transformation on the trees. How familiar, I thought, remembering the underworld I had recently emerged from, and the ways I had changed and would continue to go on changing, though with no monstrous-looking exoskeleton to show for it.

It’s in time spent alone when I notice the world in such a way and begin to find metaphors. My “noticings” are largely responsible for my life’s ever-expanding sense of beauty and meaning. Being an artist has certainly given me an eye for noticing things, though I never noticed much until I made the choice, and deemed it a personal calling, to look. For a lot of my life, I felt I was fumbling in the dark while the world seemed to carry on at a much faster pace. I couldn’t seem to break free of the feeling that I’d failed somehow, and I was constantly raging against the body I was born into, ashamed of so many things, including the romantic love I was capable of feeling for another man. There was no worse company than my own. I spent so much time trying to escape the awful things I would feel when I was alone, though even around people I loved the feelings would find their way back. Eventually, I was so debilitated by my view of myself I realized something had to change. It was as though I needed to shed my “exoskeleton”– that suffocating, chronic sense of wrongness and self hate. So I made the choice to change my beliefs about myself. I started by reading and pouring all my thoughts onto paper. I began spending time with those who felt similar feelings of shame, alienation, and loneliness. I let myself get lost in art, and began to form a relationship with my body that relied on maintenance and care. I also began walking in nature by myself more, which at first led me right into those moments of aloneness I so feared. But I soon came to the realization that solitude, the courageous work of learning to bear our loneliness and everything else that we are, is perhaps the most important thing we can take upon ourselves. When used correctly, it can lead to moments of stillness and presence that recharge our spirits and cultivate gratitude and awareness. The work we do on ourselves in solitude can be seen as the backdrop for every human interaction, and the prerequisite to any other work we set out to do. 

Solitude is not withdrawing yourself from everyone else. I understand it more as a way of finding myself, coming to inhabit and respect the gift of my body, mind, and spirit, all to whom I answer to and ultimately spend my life with. As May Sarton puts it in a moving poem titled Canticle 6, “There is no place more intimate than the spirit alone.” We cannot fully live with a sense of abundance, belonging, and a willingness to let the world’s hardships move us if in our alone time, we shrink, carry the weight of the day’s work, distract/numb ourselves, or run to someone else.

But what should spending time alone look like? I believe that we all must find that answer for ourselves. There is no one right way, and no rule book. There are only the words left to us by a past humanity that has been just as lost, just as afraid, and just as lonely as we are. My solitude consists of acts of creation, wandering, and mindfulness. These acts are ways of taking myself by the hand, sitting with every fear and discomfort, analyzing them, and arriving at outcomes of forgiveness, courageousness, and tenderness. But it can take some time to retrain thoughts, and a whole human lifetime to tolerate uncertainty. 

I learned that self-loving thoughts begin when you make room for them. You must consistently cast out the idea that productivity, appearance, talent, or status define your worth to make room for the thought that simply being here, being alive and being capable of thought, will, and action is enough. 

It can help, also, to remove all distractions and undergo a period of removal (not necessarily from work, school, or other responsibilities; this removal must take place primarily in the mind) that will shift your locus of attention and influence a new outlook for the world. For me, nature is a refuge where there is always something new to notice, a new locus for my attention, where some other spirit resides and comes to greet my own in the same space. 

As I would look inward in my alone time, revisiting old wrongdoings, sorrows and things that happened to me, I realized I could choose to see them as negative things, things that defined, constricted, or defiled me, OR I could see them in a less judgmental light: like storms that passed over the landscape of my younger self. Storms that muddied my life with their rain and frightened me with their thunder, but gave me something vital: water for growing. As shame slowly poured out of me, I saw that love could fill its place. I was spending time alone, but I was no longer feeling lonely. 

After some time, I realized I was no longer curating myself as I had been all my life; picking and choosing the things I thought made me who I was, often with too much thought given to who others wanted me to be. At last I was creating myself authentically. My mind was opened to the limitless possibilities of what I am at any given moment—a universe of desires, fears, thoughts, biological needs, memories, patterns of attention, actions, relationships, past shortcomings, and future aspirations— like an ecosystem of diverse organisms, each maintaining an important role in the shaping of the whole. I’ve begun to see other people this way too. 

To have reached where I’m at now is a real triumph. With so much love in my heart and an openness for change, I feel more ready to accept the responsibilities and challenging possibilities of my life. It begins with a choice, and beliefs matter a lot. I believe real self love can only be discovered by ourselves, and solitude is the work asked of us. Try as we might to outrun it, we all must eventually step up to the door, and open it with a curious receptiveness to whatever has been waiting patiently behind. What awaits belongs to everyone. And if a difficult change is underway, there may just be cicada shells to find to remind us how beautiful change can be.