This morning I woke up in Wichita, stumbled into my friend Megan’s kitchen, and made two pieces of toast with apricot preserves. While Megan and I were talking, our friend Tina came in from the garage apartment where she and her husband stayed during the dance weekend. Well, Tina must be a morning person because she was SUPER perky—way too perky for Marcus on a Monday. But I guess her good mood started to rub off, and before I knew it, we were all telling stories and laughing about how we keep ourselves awake on road trips. (All of our go-to strategies include making loud animal noises.)

I know it’s not the same on paper as it would be in person, but it was one of those glorious moments that I thought, God, life is fun sometimes. This was actually worth getting up for.

And then the last twelve hours happened.

I’ve been sitting at my computer for about an hour, trying to sort out my feelings and what I wanted to write about. For the majority of that time, I kept thinking that I could pull the wool over my own eyes and talk about what a great day it was. Granted, there were highlights—animal noises for breakfast—but there were frustrations as well. And rather than try to pass it all off as “I’m just tired,” I’ve decided to be honest about it instead. As it says at the top of the page, “The truth will set you free (sort of).”

The first frustrating thing was my GPS took me the wrong way out of Wichita, and I’m still not sure how it happened. But after several miles of unfamiliar highway, I realized my GPS was guiding me home via the Ozark National Forest, turning a four-and-a-half-hour trip into a six-hour one. So I got turned around and back on track, but I lost enough time that I had to substitute gas station food in place of an honest-to-god restaurant. (And that did not bless me.)

By the time I got home, I had about half an hour, so I unpacked the car and checked the mail before heading back out for a dance lesson. Well, I got two bills in the mail that were connected to the sinus surgery I had two months ago. (Isn’t that exciting?) So I opened them, and all I could think was that I made straight A’s in math all through junior high, high school, and college, and medical bills still don’t make a damn bit of sense to me. I finally figured out one of the bills this evening, but it took two calculators and four hours of guided meditation. As for the other bill, I’ll have to call someone to figure out why my balance online shows as zero but I keep getting statements in the mail. I should probably drink before I dial that number.

After the dance lesson, I had dinner with a friend who has a lot of muscles and a great tan and wore a tank top so it was all out in the open. Oh, and he didn’t touch the bread on the table. (What the hell?) Our conversation eventually turned to his committed relationship, and he even showed me the rings he wanted for his engagement one day. And whereas I’m quite happy for him (and his muscles and his committed relationship), the whole situation made me feel fat and out of shape and lonely, so I kept reaching for the bread basket because—you know—carbs have always been there for me.

A few months ago I told my therapist that I was feeling lonely. I don’t recall exactly what was going on at the time, but I think it was mostly about all the changes that have taken place since I started therapy. And whereas I consider it all to be a net positive, there have still been a lot of goodbyes—to a lot of physical stuff, to the dance studio, to a lot of relationships that although unhealthy, were also with people I cared for. So some days, I said, it feels like I’m starting all over again, doing this all by myself.

My therapist told me that first off, I’m not alone. No one is ever alone. Second, she said that being able to sit with that feeling of loneliness, as unpleasant as it may be, is really the root of strength. (If only I could sit with my loneliness and develop strength that looked good in a tank top.)

One of my favorite authors, Pema Chodron, says something similar. She says that our task is to sit with whatever emotion arises, without judgment and without running our story about it. She says that whenever we try to make a feeling go away, we unwittingly cultivate a subtle aggression against ourselves, but that by allowing a feeling to just be, we practice self-compassion.

Well, as my friend Suzanne says, “That sounds good if you say it fast.” I mean, I think what Pema says is true, but I would add these thoughts—sometimes that aggression you cultivate against yourself is not so subtle, and sitting in the midst of an uncomfortable feeling and not reaching for the bread basket is damn hard. (I guess if it were easy, everyone would have abs.)

As I’m typing now, one of my favorite things in the whole world is sitting across from me. It’s a photograph of the dancer Erick Hawkins, and the photographer Barbara Morgan took it, maybe in the 1940s. For a while, Erick was married to Martha Graham, one of the biggest names in modern dance, and Barbara’s photo shows him dancing on one leg, arms outstretched, one reaching back toward the light, the other reaching forward toward the shadows.

Well, I’ve had the photo for several years, and it’s always one of the first things I unpack when I move. (I move a lot. If you haven’t heard, I’m currently living with my parents.) If no other photo gets displayed, this one does. And maybe if you buy me a glass of scotch, I’d be willing to talk about everything it means to me, but it’s personal, and it’s late, and I couldn’t do it justice now. But what I will say is that for the last two weeks, what I’ve noticed most about the photo is the shadows, the way the dancer is turned toward them, actually stretching out to them with one hand.

Naturally, there’s a lot of talk about the shadow in psychology, and it always seems to get this bad rap, like it’s the evil twin in your family, something to be afraid of. At the very least, you don’t want to invite him to Thanksgiving. But I heard once that the shadow simply represents the unknown. It’s the parts of ourselves we haven’t looked squarely in the eye yet, the parts we run away from, the parts we don’t want to sit with and understand. And as a psychological image, I think it’s rather mysterious and beautiful that the dancer’s face is turned directly toward the dark. He doesn’t turn his back on his shadow. Rather, he invites it in.

So on days like today, I’m reminded to lean into my frustration, to get closer to my loneliness, to sit with all the parts of myself that I consider to be dark or unpleasant because all of it is still part of me. And I can keep one hand in the light, and I can turn my face toward my shadow, and I can reach out my hand and we can dance together, and it can be mysterious and beautiful.