Loneliness

 Loneliness 

Feeling lonely is probably the worst feeling in the world. Loneliness is probably the most driving force in the array of human emotions. It is at the core of most love songs. It is what we want to avoid or escape from. It is the foundation of a broken heart. It is the opposite of being in love. People want to fall in love but they more so want to not be lonely. I think this is why there are so many bad or painful relationships. Women are abused by men. Why do they suffer the abuse? Because it is better than being alone. Why do Men act out in jealous revenge? They fear being alone. But being alone is not the same as being lonely. On a personal level, I do not like being lonely but I often don’t mind being alone. I enjoy being alone. It’s a luxury of not being lonely. Before I got married I wanted to be married. I felt lonely even while in a relationship. I knew something was missing. I wanted a better relationship. I had a birth family that loved me. My Mom, my Dad, my Sister. I was never alone in that regard but still there were times when I felt very lonely. I had very good and close friends. I was never alone in that regard either but still there were times when I felt lonely. I remember soon after I was married that I felt lonely. I had friends, family, a loving wife and yet I felt lonely. I even remember saying that to my new wife. And why would I say that, why would I feel that? I think it was because it came as a surprise. I mean essentially I now had Everything I ever wanted. Everything that would make my life complete but… even still, that haunting sense of loneliness.

When we moved to Hendersonville I felt lonely but soon we made friends. I made a friend. I didn’t feel lonely, I felt like I knew somebody in a new town. I lost my father while in my 50’s and the busiest time of my life. I had been trying to rebuild our relationship for years and show him somehow that I had become a man learning the things he taught me. I lost my mother. I lost my son. In each case I felt a different level of all consuming loss. I felt like this is the worst I could ever feel but there was also a sense of feeling like please take away everything else now. Now when I can’t feel any worse loss or pain. I mean, is there a limit to the pain one feels in loss and loneliness. Is there actually a rock bottom?

I started writing this post this morning. I’ve been up most of the night but I did get a few hours of sleep and I felt great about that. Then I got up for coffee and I love the flavor and feeling of coffee. I’ve been in a lot of physical pain for this past month. It is very debilitating and all consuming. It is a kind of parallel to emotional pain. It’s the same but different. I’m taking medication to try to dull the physical pain. Then I realize that people take medication to dull emotional pain. This condition has given me some degree of empathy. I see others and realize, my God, is this the kind of pain they are feeling. I never want to take the absence of pain for granted again. I’ve also had time to think about loss. What if I loose Tess? What if she was not here, not part of my everyday life? We just watched a movie about that, How they made us. We both cried. We both know on a certain level that this is about us. That one of us will have to go on without the other. In the current school shooting news, a father had a heart attack after burying his daughter who was shot down in a mass murder. They are calling it dying by a broken heart. I believe it completely. Some people are energized to take action. Some are paralyzed with grief. Others die. They quit. They’ve had enough. These are people with feelings. Like the Tin man said, I know I have a heart because I feel it breaking. 

I feel like I’m embracing aloneness. I feel like I have everything I could ever want. Everything I ever wanted. The female companion love of my life, Tess. I feel like we are loving each other now on a deeper level than our honeymoon. But we also had our honeymoon of love and lust and now our love has been the most complete and beautiful of my life. We also had our baby. Lauren. When Lauren was born her presence completely redefined love for me. When I met her eyes looking at me from across the hospital room in the hours after she was just born everything stopped. Everything was suddenly new and different. This was the birth of Love. Love for a little person that was completely different than anything else I had ever known or would ever know.

As I was saying, I’m embracing aloneness. I know it will happen. I need to be prepared. I need to live knowing that I’ve had every gift of the human experience and I need to know that I don’t need any more and don’t need to want any more. I simply need to know what I have and what we had and be happy and content in that.