This Thing Called Loneliness

No one can prepare you for your meeting with Loneliness.  He is a creature named often, but usually in passing, an acquaintance that's come and gone, but never a friend or foe, something or someone to be taken seriously....until he feels your space and you have no other choice but to shake his hand, rub shoulder to shoulder, and listen.

In the silence.

Listen.

Do you hear him speaking?  The silence is never really silent.  Loneliness creeps into your mind, weaving in and out of it's intricate paths, whispers become loud and all consuming.  Soon you can't hear the silence at all, only noise, static.

Loneliness creeps into your bones.  Fills the pockets of air in your lungs with weighted nothingness. 

You can breathe.  Because Loneliness is suffocating.

After he's done circulating your blood, stealing oxygen, and electrifying every thought you've ever had, bringing them to life past, present, and future, he sits again.  He rubs shoulder to shoulder.  He lingers just within your bubble.  His breath is hot.  You cannot breath yourself without breathing him in.  Inhale.  Exhale.  Weighted lungs.  Screaming silence. 

When you look in the mirror you see only one reflection.

Yours.

Loneliness is a mirror.  A reflection of the deepest, darkest, most mysterious parts of you.

Loneliness is honest.  Honest.  Cruel. 

I thought pain made us honest.  And to some extent it does.

But Loneliness....Loneliness has a way of inducing internal revelation, digging up the soil, exposing whatever roots you've buried deep.

Could Loneliness be a gift?  An angel in disguise?

Right now Loneliness is neither friend nor foe, but he is not a mere acquaintance either.

Loneliness has taken up residence here, in my apartment, in my car, in my head, in my heart, in my being morning, noon, and night.

And Loneliness if fleshing out the parts of my being I never wished to see.  All these broken pieces...broken for reasons.  Some I could control.

Is this refining with fire?  Is this the test?  Will there be beauty from the ashes that Loneliness has scorched from my already aching heart?

No one can prepare you to meet Loneliness.  And until you've met him, and sat with him, and visited with him for a while, you can't truly say you understand the way Loneliness makes you feel.

Loneliness might be the only 100% honest friend you've got....

I hope this loneliness pays off....