Desperate Loneliness

When I am looking back to my recent past and to a more further, later to a distant past, I've always had some sort of understanding of the terms alone and lonely. I don't think I've come to separate them until I've moved to Madison though. In my realization I've been making as of late, perhaps more recently than that is that I have tasted long durations of loneliness and I have felt them thoroughly. However, I don't think I was ever desperately lonely such as the several extreme cases I have come to witness in the month of September and to a certain point in October. I have some opposing ideas about it and I wonder which one will win at the end of my own experiences in life. I guess I'll have to wait (hopefully for a very long time) to know the answer.

I may have never been desperately lonely because of what I like to think is my super power. My imagination and my ability to adapt quite easily (sometimes, too easily). Both are in everyone and part of human nature I like to think that I make far more uses of it than the average Joe, or Jane sitting next to me, sipping that overly priced glass of Red Merlot. I had a wonderful family as a child and even some friends. Regardless of all of that, somehow there is this deeply made impression of even a deeper feeling of loneliness that paints my childhood. I am not sure why, considering I had a brother as a playmate, which we played together all the time. I had cousins and I even had friends. I must have not had very deeply connected and made friendships then to have survived my initial reaction of my deeply painted impression. Let's move forward to Rochester, where I was always around people and in high school I had two close friends whom I spent time frequently with. I had a series of boyfriends and having a large number of admirers was something I never lacked (even though, I really am not everyone's cup of tea). However, these were always cushioned by having a supportive mother who was always there to guide me to the best of her abilities and even if I did not make great friends perhaps along every route I chose to take, I did have friends and acquaintances that has always slowly chipped away the loneliness I might have been. I believe it was more along the lines of not having someone to express my inner emotions, thoughts, feelings and someone I made very deep connections with. It was a settling down, (probably in their case too, people to ease our loneliness and send some time interacting with other humans) and choosing the lesser of the two evils kind of a thing.

Then, I moved out to Madison and meet with hopeless loneliness. To my surprise, I adapted to this very well. I was so very lonely, without a tight knit group of friends, any kind of support group here, or anyone to share all the dwelling feelings deep inside of me that has made my soul their dark harbor and I slowly began to rot away in order to experience a rebirth on it's own right (more on that on another entry).  I don't think I have ever been lonelier in my life than my first two and a half, almost three years in Madison. My voice fell on my then bare white walls and my own deaf ears. I moved on from the comfort and luxury of having friends and family in the near vicinity and focused solely on myself and my life goals. I can't say I have been able to achieve them entirely with concrete, physical evidence, though the personal growth I have gone through is tremendous and visible to anyone who has been in my life even  as short as three years. Imagine the difference you could see if you had been in my life longer than that. I had lots of time in my hands to focus on myself and moved on. I made some big decisions, I backed them up as I continued falling down frequently and eventually came to an understanding, created my own system for doing things and thoroughly got to the core of myself. Though I am not entirely satisfied with myself, I have begun and understanding relationship that allowed me to know where to kick, punch, stroke, gaze or love. It also knows when to forget and the moments to push myself just a little further. I had myself, my thoughts, desires, my books and a whole bunch of empty notebooks that stared back at me both glaringly and pleadingly. Courage I said, though I have none of it, I plunged and dragged my butt to today.

I have so much more growing left to do. I have only begun to scratch the tip of the ice burg. But, I understand what loneliness means. I was luckily able to transfer loneliness to alone time where I have embraced it with its disadvantaged and have come to terms with it by accepting the truth about myself and my own circumstances and even come to love it. I developed a distaste for overcrowded places, unneeded people in my life, a simpler, quieter life where I fulfilled my own needs and limited my human interaction to a minimum, by choice which I fully enjoyed when the time came.

So, I understand loneliness, I thoroughly do. I've been there and done that, for years, many years in fact. I am happy and prayful that I never actually go through a phase where I am desperately lonely where I seek the comfort of anyone and everyone, who is willing to be there, talk to me, to ease the loneliness out of me, settling outside of my own principals and standards where I will come to regret such actions and associations at a later point in my life. The people in your life should not be people who you admire to have, though for whatever reason cannot gain them so and in return you settle down to people who are okay with your existence in their lives and you are okay with their existence in your life, though they are not preferred.