by Melody Bish

Created on: December 15, 2009

Loneliness is my constant friend and companion; isolation beyond solitude and feeling disenfranchised from the world. No one wants to admit to loneliness, as the human animal is a pack creature craving the companionship of others. Sometimes I do crave the companionship of another; sometimes I want to lose myself in the darkness of sleep for all time but more often than not I reflect on how I arrived at this station in life.

I've never had a lot of friends; an only child, I learned at a young age about being alone and being the only one. Through school years I could mask the loneliness with a few activities yet summer would find me at home. While others enjoyed community swimming, I was reading my way through fantasy times of visiting other lands, being popular, being wanted; most of all, being needed. As the years have gone by I've held jobs and enjoyed co-workers only in the light of work, Most activities I wanted to enjoy, I endeavored myself: movies, baseball games, events, - if I wanted to appear normal, I would purchase an extra ticket and give it to someone I knew was available. For a few years, I had roommates and housemates so the loneliness abated with the physical presence of another yet the common thread in all these "others" has been that they have moved on before I was ready to let them go; left me grasping nothing in their collective wake. My parents had some sense of my aloneness but Mom and Dad both had been alone in various ways yet even they had each other in a true "til death do us part" manner. No one ever asked me out; no one accompanied me to the prom or to holiday parties. When I was in college I secretly wanted my friends to throw a surprise birthday party for me just as they had for my roommate ... but they never did. \

What is life all about; how does one define onesself? We define ourselves by our attachments; our families, our friends, our coworkers; our significant others; husbands, wives, partners - always a small part of a large whole.

Whole? I don't know if there's ever been a time when I was entirely whole but never as bereft of human contact as I now am and as I look into the future I don't see someone beside me, nor me as part of a group - it's as if I exist in a vacuum with the air I breath known only to me. My religion teaches that one is never alone; that God is always with us even as we travel a dark and lonely road; that He sends us strength sufficient for the day, that He wants us to be fulfilled. I believe this; I have felt inner peace and warmth and say that I'm okay and, on the face of it, I am - reasonably healthy, safe in my home but jobless and without a purpose or direction for my life. This is wrong; surely I can break the chains loneliness has confined me with and I believe I can but there is the path behind me and shouldn't I remember that history repeats itself? I can look behind me and continue alone; that path is open to me or I can choose to carefully venture outside the vacuum, making honest, earnest efforts at being, if not what I dreamed, what God intended.

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