There is a loneliness that is felt beyond the deepest places of your person. A loneliness that plays tricks on your mind and leaves you wondering… guessing… imagining… It is a loneliness i have felt for days.
It refuses to leave me. Let me be. Let me dream. Let me live in peace.
Hi, i am Nigel.
I know it has been a while. I have been busy. I got a new job.
Deal with it.
This loneliness i speak of, maybe you have felt it too. It is the sort you feel when surrounded by dozens yet feel for none. The sort where the sight of your words pouring out onto your keyboard appear more fulfilling than the groaning of lover long lost. It is the sort of loneliness that eats at me.
Everyday.
I feel alone. Weird i should say that. As though there was a marked difference between being lonely and feeling alone. Is there? I believe there is. There should be. I refuse to accept that i alone feel this.
I feel alone. I say it again… for effect.
I feel like too many people to so many people and almost no one to myself. I feel lost within myself and yet find myself come alive upon the prompting of another. I feel like the spoon lying next to the saucer after the stir. I feel like the carrot underneath the snow when snowman comes tumbling. I feel like the illuminated ‘no smoking’ sign when the lights in the plane go off.
Like i said, i feel alone.
It is a feeling long since nurtured within myself. I remember in my undergraduate years as i sat before a lady professing her admiration for my warm heart. She was attempting to counsel me. I felt for her.
I had been forced to speak to someone because of ‘the way i was’.
How was i? I wonder.
Doesn’t matter.
I spoke to her. It felt weird. On one hand, i knew what i was doing to her. She required me to provide commentary on her seeming random questions. Once i obliged, she will light up like the daughter of the morning sun and propose further lines of argument to which i will be expected to provide some more commentary. This, i believed, was to cause an illumination of my true purpose thereby set me on the path of eternal enlightenment.
Or some other rubbish hocus pocus like that.
On the other hand, i badly needed someone to get to the bottom of my unending desire to be accepted as i was. Every soul knew me differently. Same name though, but just different. I spoke in measured tones to some and in loud and cheering voice to others. I slapped some on the back and gently caressed the hands of others. I ate like a king around some and yet scrambled for crumbs with others.
How was i going to explain this to her without coming across like a complete loon?
So i did not.
I sought in her questions prompts and studied her with caution for visual cues. I paid closer attention to her mannerisms than the spirit of what she spoke. i gave here the answers she sought and she gave me the all-clear i required.
The thing is from time to time i connect with individuals who get to the heart of me. It did not happen with her. I think i have spent too much time trying to get to know people and being what they want me to be to the point that i have forgotten the joy of being me.
Scratch that. I have forgotten how to be me. Whether there was ever a me, i am not sure.
Yet, i remember how years long gone i will find delight in the thought of waking up alone in a home far away. Removed from the craziness of the day and engulfed by the richness of the now. I dreamt of the day when my silence in the art of the spoken will not be a hindrance to the revelations from my written ones.
Rubbish.
No one gets that bag of tosh. No one wants to be with someone whose dream of a life is that of a wandering hermit. No one wants a life with anyone with that sort of life. So now i dream of my life and live out that of another.
Like i said, I feel alone.
Very deep!
Thank you Amanda.