Loneliness is like staring up at the night sky and seeing a single star faintly twinkling in the night.

Trying to reach out to touch another soul and find nothing there. To feel the strange emptiness of missing facets which allows a person to be complete.

I have often found myself alone. Sometimes by choice but more often just because. It is a strange feeling to be in a room of people and yet not be able to connect to anybody. To stare at a sea of dreamers, hoping to make a connection and yet fall into the abyss of your own soul to wallow sometimes in self-pity and sometimes in acceptance.

Loneliness is not something, I believe, that materializes out of nothing. It creeps up slowly. Sliding its tiny claws into the non-essential parts first. And then like a mountain climber, finding one hand hold and then the next, reaching the peak and then shouting its glory.

It can be prevented with vigilance. Choosing to share of oneself, I think, prevents loneliness to grab a foot hold.

But once loneliness has found it niche, it digs in. It inspects its domains and having the high ground it proclaims its mastery. We pay obeisance to it because we don't know any better. We play the role of conquered masses becoming slaves to it. Allowing it to dictate what we will be.

It creeps into every crevasse it can. Every little thing one once found beautiful, healthy, and fun polluting it. Changing not our love for what we do but rather the perspective until it changes into something different, a perversion.

Loneliness strengthens itself.

Allowing us to create the castle walls that prevents both friend and foe from entering. Digging the trench which will become the moat of our lives. Casting away those who could probably help us fight the darkness that has eclipsed our lives.

Blocking out the sun that could possibly warm the ground and create a better understanding of ourselves.

Adrift in the sea of life, no life raft, no flotsam, no other body for miles on end.

We wait in quietness, in isolation, because we allowed the perspective that nobody else would want us to win.

Learn more about this author, Paul Yap.
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