Shadows of Loneliness

In a world of unprecedented events and uncontrollable circumstances, you find yourself making a decision. You find yourself asking not yourself, but another. Was it a wise decision? Are you ready to open your heart, are you ready to find out what you’re hiding? It’s been so many years do you remember what it is? Of course you do! It may not be the fear, It may not be the anger. But it will have to be faced, this darkness that hides so deep inside, will finally come out or it will continue to control you forever. But the fear grows, The remembered scars begin to burn. Can you trust again? I have asked this question a thousand times and every time the question is always No, don’t fucking do it! But YOU reached out, you made the first move… Now your petrified, What’s gonna happen? Have you made this mistake before? Or is this something that can actually exist? You see everyone else, all of them standing with each other. Together, they are standing with each other, but you… You continue to stand in the shadows, staying in the darkness. Hoping you don’t get noticed, praying no one comes for you, they always have a hard time finding you when you’re hidden from sight. You never did feel like you belonged anywhere, making fake smiles everyday. Hiding your true feelings from the world. But this time… Why did you do it? What force overtook this action and you actually reached out into the world with an open heart. How confident are you? You have not tried for this long for a reason… Or was it really a reason or just ignorance, and stupidity? Why does this one feel different? What is it that makes her shine so bright? The spirit that lays so deep, the beautiful soul that has been scared and neglected? Is it because you are the same? Is there a recognition of pain that has taken place, so deep, so subconscious that it cannot be identified? You have made the move, you will follow through in the morning, the nervousness begins to set in… You have never been good at conversation with the ones you are attracted to. Your silence always does more damage than good, your tied up tongue where does this come from? Why are you so good at freezing and never finding the right words? Fuck man, You did it. Why you did it, cannot be explained. Your mind keeps telling you that this is the dumbest thing that you’ve done in a long time. What happens if things do work out? What happens if things don’t work out? But every bone, every muscle, my heart, my gut… They all tell me that I need to talk to you, That this time I need to make this step. I can no longer let my fears and pain define my choices. This loneliness, is it really what you want for yourself? You have been screaming inside for years. Hurting alone, and scared. This world has never presented many opportunities, or perhaps it presented too many too soon, only to be taken away before I could make the choice? You have always been relied on by others, have you ever relied on others? You have asked for help, yes. But have you ever actually relied on them? You have always stayed strong in face… But behind that mask you wear everyday is the real scars. The pain deep inside, that lets you know how useless you feel. How insecure you feel about yourself and your job. How this appearance of confidence is just to keep others from asking. Keep them away from your pain. If they don’t know that it is there, they will not come looking. Kept tight for years, locked up and never to be seen or heard. The pain forgotten in appearance, but killing you inside. You don’t care about yourself, that is evident in your lack of care for yourself. Sleep has not existed for 2 weeks now, the insomnia getting worse the older you get, the longer you hide yourself. Eating? Is this a joke, How many meals do you eat in one day? One, don’t make me laugh! Your ass can’t even remember the last time you had an actual meal, sitting down at an actual table with others. This lifestyle has not existed to you, It does not exist to you now. So you continue to feed yourself like you deserve. Like the peasant that you are, nothing but the bottom of the barrel. These scraps are what you get, they are all you give yourself. How many times have you starved yourself because you did not think you deserved to eat. Why did you not deserve to eat? Because your useless ass did not do anything, so why would you get rewarded with being able to have food? Is food a reward? Why do you think like this… What pain is it that hides so deep you are slowly killing yourself with cigarettes, drugs, and alcohol? What has the pain of life taken from you, that has left you smashed, broken, and unfinished. Your feelings of uselessness, your feeling of never being able to do anything right. You have been fucking up your whole life, Never getting it right. You failed, you broke, and you gave up when the world told you that you were not good enough. And now after years of hiding yourself from others, You have invited someone in… And why? I cannot say it is an attraction that is physical, mental, and spiritually. This is so new, this is unknown. Is it real? Can it be that something so beautiful can exist? Will she understand you, will she be willing to let you in? This door you have opened is full of unknown feelings, unknown thoughts. The Excitement is making it impossible to sleep, The fear is making the clock speed by. In a time of unprecedented events and uncontrollable circumstances, you have reached out for a hand. Will it hold on? If this one let’s go will you ever try again? Probably not, I give it one more try, in this attempt to open my mind, my heart, and my soul. I will either find out that I am supposed to be here alone, or only ever as a friend. But Maybe... perhaps a love can grow. You know that you love too easily sometimes, that your heart being opened gets denied often and every time the pain is deeper than you have ever let on. You like to tell people to see the positive, look at the bright side! This… This is the biggest lie that you tell... because in your mind the positive is bullshit. It has never truly worked out for you. You have tried but in the end the shadows creep over you and soon you find yourself back with your good ole friend the dark! Where hiding is easy, and others cannot recognize the hurt caused by so many throughout your life. It is this pain, this hurt, and insecurity that keeps you from going out in the world. You go to work with your fake smile and get the job done, pretending to be the goof that makes the place better. But has anyone ever truly looked into your soul? Have they tried? When her eyes meet mine, I can’t help but turn away. her gaze so... Beautiful, so deep, so piercing. It feels as though she can see through me when I make that eye contact. But it stops you, it freezes your thoughts and stops your heart. For it has seen your pain, even when you pretended it did not exist, when you tried to smile those piercing eyes saw the truth of your soul. They saw something that you do not even recognize. A feeling so new that it has fucked up your head and thoughts. Unable to focus, unable to do anything. Mind constantly wandering back to the one who took you by surprise… Why did this happen, is it actually something that can grow deeper and stronger than friendship? You actually made the try, you actually are stepping out of your shell. It was not easy, it required the help of smoking, drinking and deep contemplation in a place you have refused to go to for almost a decade. The pain going back before relationships.

I grew up in a big family, but have always felt alone and rejected. 2 older brothers that were close growing up, but I had always been the third wheel and excluded, Never invited and always told to go. Then there are the 2 younger ones, they are so much younger that I could never truly make that connection with them. Not to mention their father my mother’s second husband had made sure that my older brothers and I had known our place. His insults, and hostility towards my older brothers and I drove the wedge ever so deeper. We walked away! My oldest brother moved out when he was in college, My next oldest brother moved out as soon as he graduated high school. Leaving me behind once again with a man that I disliked, and distrusted. He was abusive, I understood it, even at that age. But it doesn’t mean I could handle it all the time. I had felt like I had been left behind since I was a child. Never knowing anything about my biological father except that he left after I was born. But at this point the loss of my brothers from the house was the scariest. I was now completely alone. My mother was working and going to school and it felt like I never saw her. So I would hide in my room, or go to the mountain and climb on the foothill trails of the sandia mountains. It was here when I was alone that I found the most solace. It was here that I could hear myself think. And then the Divorce hit, I was placed dead center. I was gonna have to see family therapists so that they could decide who got custody of the young ones. But with this split I was gonna have to babysit, I was gonna have to clean up the house, I began being told I needed to step up more. I did not understand this at the time and should have never been asked or told that I needed to step up more while I myself was still a child that did not have the experience, or knowledge to take on the required responsibilities… This is when I decided FUCK THIS SHIT! I found booze, weed, cigarettes, meth, and pills. A world where everyone wanted to hang out with you. Where people acted disappointed if you couldn’t show or come. Why would I rush home to take care of kids when I was still just a kid myself. Smoking everyday, drinking vodka in water bottles during class in highschool. Dropping acid an hour before the first bell rang. So wasted during classes in high school I did not pay attention to a fucking thing, Homework? What the Fuck are you talking about? I don’t give a fuck about that, I am just waiting for this damn class to end so I can hit the bubble, drink a beer and roll a joint, I ain’t got shit for homework. It happened so fast in my blur of drugs, that I was failing everything I had fallen so far behind that my only choice to graduate was to repeat 1 ½ years of highschool. Sitting in the office with my mother, a highschool counselor at another school at the time, and my current school counselor at the school I attended, We sat at a table in the office, they were drawing out a plan for me. Telling me that this is what I was going to do, That this is how I was going to graduate highschool. I sat in the chair with a whatever attitude, Fuck them! Who were they to tell me how I was gonna live my life. During this meeting I had taken some pills and did not really say much because I was so fucked up. I couldn’t stay away from the drugs and at least those friends were happy to see me when I showed up, Rather than just get upset that I had not cleaned your house like you expected. So I fucking left at 17 years old, dropped out of high school and got my GED, living with a girlfriend at the time. I would soon come to realize that letting her live with me would be the biggest mistake of my life. She was unemployed the entire time we were living together. She never did anything, and I mean that literally! At one point everyday for a month I would come home to her crying while comparing her life to Hollywood movies! I would always throw my hands up in exasperation and go get high… forget about it, let her cry and yell and scream. I can’t feel a fucking thing after the beer, the weed, and the meth. I would just zone out, and lived with this abusive bitch for too long! Then I joined the Army, Learned a little more about myself, but most importantly I got away from the drugs. I did this for my time, and could not find a job after I got out. That’s when my mother helped me get into children’s psychiatric care. And this is truly the point when everything began to turn around for me. Yes, I was doing a good service by helping children in the psychiatric setting, but for me, it was to repair mistakes, But was I the one who had committed these mistakes? Yes and No. The human psyche as I have come to learn is the weakest and the strongest thing that a person has. And so I worked with the children, and began to learn about myself, and how to hide my pain, scars and depression better than ever. I have mastered the look of normalcy. I will never make it evident intentionally that I am depressed in any way. I will tell you That I am tired, or that I did not sleep well, which is probably also true as I lay awake at night and question the timing. Being In Colorado I thought I had finally found a place to hide from the world, To keep myself locked away alone so that I would not have to feel the pain of being unwanted, how can you be wanted when nobody knows who you are. My low profile kept ever so carefully, doing whatever I could to avoid being noticed. Making myself silly and over the top when at work so that my coworkers do not find the real me, hiding in the shadows ever so vigilant and on guard.

This happened so fast, it happened suddenly. You liked her, but you were in no way falling for her, then something clicked. A moment so fleeting, so quick, and so strong that has taken over your thoughts and your feelings. Never has anyone been so unique that it has made you stop and forget the pain. Opened up just enough and showed that beautiful soul that harnesses so much potential. But at the same time capturing your eye, your thoughts, and giving you a willingness to open your heart. Everything inside of me is telling me that this one will not take advantage. That this one will be upfront and tell you the truth. The truth can be painful, but it does not strike as hard as deceit and lies do. And I do not believe this one has it in her, She has a wisdom in her eyes. A pain that you recognize, and for some reason you want to hold on and never let go. This may be your last chance at happiness. If the worst happens you will no longer care anymore, and the world will become a very cold place. It has been winter in your heart for the last 20 years. The day you said fuck it, and gave up on the world it also gave up on you. But years of effort and you have found some kind of peace with the past, you have grown to enjoy the darkness and even find comfort that it will always be there. So that’s where we go from here. You take a peak out of your darkness and are hoping that maybe, a world does exist outside of here. My demons are ever present, my insecurity always accounted for, and my fear of getting too close keeps that ever vigilant guard over my heart. Where have they gone this time, Why did fear not stop you from sending that message, Your demons missing from the job of giving me all the doubts and reminding me that happiness does and cannot exist. Where did this courage to tell this girl how you are feeling come from? What did she do to bring it out of you? Will she still like me after she learns the truth? Can we heal each other's pain? Is that what this is, are we finding a true and genuine relationship? Whether that be Romantically or not I believe I have found someone, who I can call and talk to. Someone who is willing to listen, Do we both need that shoulder to cry on. I just do not want to be here alone, lost, and without cause anymore. I want to be held at night, to be loved, to look forward to getting home, rather than dread the silent scream of loneliness as you walk through your front door. Only to be reminded that you have nothing that you truly look forward to at the end of the day. No one to call, no one to hold, no one to tell you that it’s all over now and we are together again. If it does not happen then it does not exist, we step into a new light and I find myself so petrified, so scared that I fear I will forget how to talk. Will my tongue get twisted like it does so easily. This time I pray it will be different, this time I give myself one last time I open my heart. If I am rejected once more, then this life was not meant for me to have a partner, but instead to just hide in the shadows and help those that require a hand after tripping, but do not expect them to bring me out, I just offer the hand, and stay in my darkness. Tomorrow we try one last peak.