The Shape of You

Growth, and the grief that comes with it.

Credit: João Jesus

“Loneliness doesn’t come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself.”
~ Carl Jung

My mother once told me it is difficult to stay friends with people from childhood (especially high school) because they often have an idea of “who you are,” a shape you once fit into, and they will mentally keep you in that form. It is hard to grow larger when they keep saying, “But this is the size of you.”

It is one of the reasons traveling from home is so freeing: no one has any expectations of you, so you can show up any size or shape you like.

This subconscious, unspoken pulling you back is not out of enmity or spite; it is often simply that you have grown and their perception of you hasn’t. In some cases, it is possible to expand your old shape — to show them this growing version of you and bring them along. In others, it isn’t. Your growth doesn’t fit for them — doesn’t align with their direction, doesn’t suit who they want you to be, or, perhaps, it challenges them. Maybe it has involved you learning a metaphorical language they do not speak so they cannot grow with you.

These can be lonely times. You love them, they love you — they have been present on your path, supported you in hard moments, you have cared for each other when it mattered. You were able to lean when you needed to. Yet, now, you can no longer find common ground. Often it feels you have two choices: shrink back into the old you so the shape still fits or grow and potentially leave someone behind.

But you have a big heart and it hurts to leave someone you care about — it is unkind. Selfish. Unloving. If you care about them, you’ll do what you can.

So you hold off on the dream. You delay the trip, cancel the class. “I can do it later,” you tell yourself. You stay with them — of course you do. But that small, budding part of you starts to wither, to die. Each tiny choice — to stay in the job that keeps your partner comfortable, to remain living close to Mom, to not take the art class/get a divorce/move to Italy until the kids are grown — it wilts just a bit more. But your loved ones are intact, unthreatened. Your love remains loyal.

The other path is to choose yourself — take the trip, quit the job, quit the marriage, take the course that will open new chapters, new ways of being. Speak your truth. It may be large, coming all at once, or it may be one thousand small shifts, but it will be a rupture — a severing of old and new.

And not everyone will come along.

Some, you choose — which is not easy, but necessary — a kind of Marie Kondo of your life. A sorting of what or who no longer fits in the new picture. Some are not your choice. A gradual falling away is usually easier than an abrupt break, a loved one tearing from your life.

Most painful are those you never thought you’d lose. The ones you thought would support and see you no matter what. But for whatever reason (which we can never truly know), they are gone. Unable or unwilling to stay on the same page. That part of the foxhole is now empty.

You question your choices. Wonder if you are selfish, if you did the right thing. On a deep level, you know (you would have suffocated in the old form).

So a further part of you dies, the one that was in relationship with them. A further severing of the old self.

But you stand in your truth, don’t shrink down. You become this next you — and hopefully the next. You find new resonance, relationship with people who appreciate the new form.

In doing so, the world and those around you become a little bit freer. Courage is contagious — each brave choice you make opens room for others to make their own. What you’re calling in expands as does who you are calling to. It invites all of us to stretch a little further.

* * *

I write this in mourning. I have lost (to some degree) people I love deeply. It has become clear that my form expands beyond the aperture through which they see me. I pleaded. I cajoled. Then I got angry. I pushed. But my elbows didn’t work. I exist outside their vision. [Or, perhaps, their vision does not like where I exist.] And it is lonely. I ache for the empty spaces alongside me. They are not quite gone, but I now see they can no longer be near — not in the way I needed.

So on I go — on to look for kindred spirits like you. Those who also chose growth. Those who can sit close on this journey and say, “Me, too.”

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it, because what the world needs is people who come alive.”
~ Howard Thurman