The belief
All my life I thought I was looking for love. What I was really looking for was companionship: someone, human or not, beside me, with no transaction in it.
Where it comes from
I love being alone. I really do. I always thought that wasn’t completely natural, that it came from my upbringing, so I kept telling myself I needed love. Then I started living with a dog, a big pit bull, and one morning in the sun after giving her a bath I finally had words for it. We give each other companionship, and life is so much better.
How it shows up for me
It changed what I ask of people. I need less performance and more presence: someone in the room, doing their thing while I do mine.
I’m still learning it. It felt strange to me, almost foreign, to find the answer in a dog and not a person. Obvious, when you think about it. Biology got there before I did.