I have spent the weekend completing projects, eating terrible food, painting mediocre paintings and lovely, intriguing paintings, and thinking and feeling, avoiding and embracing. All of this is part of an approximately annual event where I have the house entirely to myself and I use the time to accomplish an extraordinary amount and usually high quality products. But I also use this time to stop pretending.

I value authenticity, perhaps above all. That commitment to authenticity requires a high level of avoidance because the feelings I feel are intense and thorough. I have found that people have a low tolerance for authentic, intense and thorough feelings so I spend a lot of time in my head.

While I also have a low tolerance of that trifecta I can’t really abandon myself so there is an unconditional nature to the relationship I have with myself.

So this is the weekend where all feelings I haven’t judged out of existence are permitted to reach the surface.

The prevailing feeling is isolation. Not in the sense that I am alone in the house – duh. But that I am misunderstood and unseen. Not in a melancholy Tom Petty way. In fact, I have no desire for people to “know what it’s like to be meee-eeee.”

After allowing this feeling to surface I try to judge it back down, classifying it as ridiculous. When that doesn’t work, I send a few vague text messages after really wrecking my brain as to who my friends are. In these moments I can not remember. Stuff like, “Any big plans for the weekend?” Even some deep sincere shit like, “Hey I know you are struggling. I want you to know I support whatever decision you make.” Trying to feel connected. Trying to create a body of evidence against this feeling.

Those texts go unanswered. There are a lot of possible explanations, many of which have nothing to do with me. But, I’m still not sure why. So, for now it is simply a fact. A fact that rings like a tuning fork at a pitch sometimes overridden by the background noise but continually present.

The paint covered so well that a second coat is unnecessary. So I paint our master bathroom too. Mmmm gorgeous. Especially with the light that floods in from the sky light. Perfection.

I head to the store to grab a few things including unhealthy food and return to painting. Searching for inspiration for beautiful masculine energy…ah yes, a peacock. But the painting isn’t going well. I consider walking away. I check my phone. Nothing to report. One of our two new kittens crawls up into the hood of my sweatshirt. Well, since I am here anyway and have already ruined this piece I might as well experiment a bit.

I turn in a bit early.

And I wake early the next morning. I should workout but I had had a thought… I took out a new canvas and began to paint.

As I paint each shape and texture I feel myself falling into all that I have been trying to avoid. That whisper. “You don’t belong in this world. You are too much and that will never be enough.” This painting takes hours, which is unusual.

I spend some time trying to contain and organize the messes I have made in my whirlwind of projects. I can organize ideas much more skillfully than stuff. Where does any of this go anyway?

Why can’t I be enough? I am such a productive person. Why doesn’t that matter?

I am sitting and flexing my jaw – wandering aimlessly – looking for another project to solidify my value. Damn. We don’t have everything we need to install the new faucet. Annoying.

The hours are crawling by and this weekend that is no one’s but my own is coming to a close. What do I have to show for it? Ok well, actually a lot. But productivity has never been the issue, has it? Is it likability? Am I not relatable? Maybe I am not funny… impossible. Too much evidence to the contrary.

Where is that feeling of belonging that is so essential? Do I display so much confidence that people think I have no need for belonging? Why does no one ask how I am?

I remember I do have a friend. I text, “I wish I fit more easily into this world. I am exhausted.”

I paint. I barely color the sky, fluff the clouds. The mountain is majestic and cold. The meadow races to the fence in the foreground. My phone buzzes with an incoming message.

“You aren’t everyone’s cup of tea but you are some people’s shot of whiskey. And we love you.”

And then I remember. I remember the lesson I have learned over and over again.

There are many blades of grass here. Many trees. The posts work together to form a fence. There is one mountain. It is unapologetic in it’s interruption of the horizon. It isn’t moping around wishing for more mountains so it doesn’t have to be lonely. Save for the birds, at least half the mountain is always unseen. Its presence is so undeniable that no one even wonders about it. No one says, “I wonder if the mountain made it through that storm?” Yet the mountain belongs. Everything is as it should be.