This weekend I had time at the ranch when I got to be deliciously alone. I am only there as a guest of gracious people who share their place in the Texas hill country with me. They are not there. I am alone. I am unselfconscious, which is the wrong set of syllables strung together. I was only self: no ego, no gender, no age, no class, no status, no relationship, no responsibility, no need. Not the object of eyes, judgment or witness. I was entirely self, entirely conscious. I was outside of shame. I was alone, unobserved, and as safe as I could possibly be on private land in nature.

Walking and running at will on a path in a field, alongside a stream, startling small animals. Observing a feral tom hunt a field mouse or bird. A turtle saw me first and submerged. Shame comes where can i buy tramadol online from outside of self. It is a hook into a raw and tender place that makes us contort around it. It is like a thorn embedded in skin, unnoticeable until poked or even gently brushed, unbearable to stand upon, if it is in your foot, then the sharpest stabbing pain from a tiny object barely visible, which can infect and fester.

My therapist once said people’s motivations were usually traced to the avoidance of shame. I can understand why.

I need a regular experience of solitude, of safety in nature, of self, alone and conscious. Shameless and perfect, simply as a creature under the sky, with my feet on the ground, using my senses to experience the world, to simply be alive, breathe, and inhabit my body. Rooted, mobile, breathing, listening, looking. Active: not the silence of meditation, but the noise of the world flowing through my experience of it.