I remember well the sudden rush of loneliness the moment my wife told me she wanted a divorce.

It was a late night, early in November. The days were becoming short, and outside the days had turned cold, and leaves, fallen from trees, were brittle and brown.
In an instant, like a fog, loneliness wrapped around me, and like a fog, it left me cold and confused. I suddenly couldn't see a future. All I could do was feel the hurt. It's an exquisite pain that comes in those dark hours. In the months to follow, I came to think of the loneliness as a living thing, an unseen, unwelcome companion that walked with me, stalking me, stealing joy from every moment, like a Genie whose bottle suddenly came uncorked, filling my life with acrid smoke.

I remember looking around our home, and suddenly realizing it wasn't "home" at all. It was now nothing more than a hotel room and I was on a check-out deadline. I lay down on the couch in the living room, that night, crying. Not quite able to understand how the woman I still loved had discarded me, I wrapped myself in my arms, hugging myself, sobbing, sinking into a deep emotional darkness that scares me even now, remembering.
I sobbed myself to sleep that night, and many nights, and I would get up every day, go to work, and keep my pain to myself. I felt embarrassed and ashamed - I didn't want to tell anyone.

There were times when I would come home, grab the Bourbon and quickly down three or four long swallows straight from the bottle. Then I would get in my car and drive. I chose the back roads, the country roads, lonely roads, where I would rarely meet traffic. I would pull off the side of the roadway, turn off the car and sit there in the cold and dark, listening to the late-Autumn wind, and crying. Nothing seemed quite real. It was dream-walking, through a nightmare of swirling emotion and, for a while, I didn't care whether I lived or died.
I was lost, with no idea where to turn and I couldn't manage a rational thought.
It was a feeling of being emotionally out of control that was particularly frightening. And I wanted her back. I wanted what we were. I wanted my family back, I wanted my home, I wanted the comfort of the mundane day to day of life that only a family can offer. And I desperately wanted to be hugged, and touched - loved. Sometimes, my skin would ache for a loving touch.

Then came feelings of failure. The failure of a second marriage, the failure to be there for my child, the failure to make enough money. The list in my mind was endless, and relentless.
I would sometimes sneak a furtive look at my coworkers nearing the end of a work day, and I would be filled with envy - jealous that they were going home to their own home, to their spouses, and kids and families and 'boring' lives. How I longed for that banality.
Now, years later, many of these emotions still haunt me. And often, my very skin aches for a hug, and a touch.

I have crammed all of my nearly fifty years of life into one small room, where I now live. But I have become a dreamer of big dreams. Someday soon, I will again have a life and love, and the Genie of Loneliness will be put back in the bottle.
But I will not able to forget.

The Genie will rattle there inside his bottle - his dirty little bottle that will forever sit on the fire-place mantle among the cobwebs of my darkest imaginations, a constant reminder of the pain of what was, and a constant reminder of what could be, again.

Learn more about this author, Henry Reese.
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