The Cure for Loneliness

I really, truly, honestly, do not know how to get out of this place. There is something missing. And I've always felt it. I know staying busy correlates to activity in the brain which will keep me in high spirits, start the ball rolling, and allow me to get to the place where I'm living out my soul's purpose. The only problem -I don't know what that is. The words "I don't know" have kept me in limbo for 2 years now.

I want to leap out of my skin so violently, so obtrusively to those that are watching or waiting for that day to come and it will be most glorious to me more so than to them. It will feel like the fucking sun has birthed itself from my chest and the pain that has enslaved our minds for decades, eras, centuries, will finally vanish. It will have no place to go but out and away. I have no other feeling than frustration, pain, and pure agony - is this what they call "self-loathing?"

It hurts to breathe clean air into my lungs. I want to cut out a chunk of my tongue and scream until my jaw falls off.

I know I keep saying this but WHEN?? When will I act on impulse? When will I finally make those fucking moves, get out of my own damn way, and JUST DO IT?

I go up and down and back and forth and all around just thinking and thinking and waiting and planning -for what? Just to let another opportunity pass me by because I am comfortable with spending time by myself -living a mundane, non-influential life and then WHAT? Keeping busy for the sake of keeping busy? Tricking my mind into thinking I'm doing something important? That thinking about writing the book, recording the song, starting the podcast, reading the 30+ tabs I have open on my computer that are supposed to motivate me into being the best version of myself instantly is just as exhausting as actually DOING THOSE THINGS -so I think I'll just put the dishes away and call that my victory for the day!! And I think to myself -Why am I like this?? Absurd.

I live in my head and I guess that fantasy world is enough for me...for now. I've been alone all my life and I finally know how to be alone. Or know what that looks like at the very least. *Cue the confetti!* I know how to be alone when I'm the only person in the room and sometimes that's the most exhilarating type of loneliness there is. I know how to be alone when I get together with friends and we tell each other what we've been up to lately. I'm having another existential crisis, but what's new with you?

I know how to be alone in a crowd at a concert with tears streaming down my face because I'm lifted to the highest depths of despair IRL and not just through my car speakers. I know how to be alone on a date with a dude whose depth is comparable to that of the inflatable kiddie pool my neighbors use to bathe their dogs in.

I know how to be alone when he licks his lips like he's spreading butter on toast, eyeing me up and down, opens his mouth for a cat call and expects me to react as if he told me I won the lottery.

I know how to be alone at a bar holding a drink I never wanted in the first place but felt obligated to order since everyone else is drinking and I'd be the uptight sober friend who may or may not have a drinking problem since she'd much rather wake up early and go to yoga instead of eat her feelings and order bottomless mimosas at brunch the next morning. Scanning the room pretending to enjoy myself while I look to my left and the friend who dragged me out starts making out with a dude she only met a week ago but swears he's the one.

I know how to be alone at the grocery store, farmers market, gas station, movie theater, my favorite restaurant, in any checkout line, and in my car driving home belting out Buddy Holly or Sam Cooke or Tierra Whack.

I know how to be alone when I'm sick in bed and there is a lifetime supply of used tissue resembling the volcano my sister made for her school science project in the 5th grade.

I know how to be alone when I want to be and even when I do not. I know how to be alone during date night and I just so happen to be the seventh, fifth, or third wheel -but wait? Some guy who I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole comes walking in and suddenly my friend "forgot to mention Jeff was coming to. Jeff is newly single. I think you and Jeff might get along." Because he's single. As if all single people share some common bond of singleness and isn't that enough for you to want to date them?? OR the "You can put our meals on the same tab but she's here by herself." She's single. She's ALONE. *ALONE ALONE ALONE*

I know how to be alone when I want to build things that require assembly and a shat ton of muscle power to slam the pieces into place. *Spoiler alert: I've broken many finger nails with this one.*

I know how to be alone all snuggled up on the couch on a Friday night watching Do The Right Thing for the umpteenth time. *Shout out to Spike Lee for filling that void!!*

I know how to be alone when I learn a new skill or tidbit of knowledge or discover an artist that brings me to another dimension. And all I want to do is share it with the world. So I put it on one of my various curated Spotify playlists that will only vibrate one set of eardrums. Just in case you were wondering, I am the owner of those eardrums.

I write and I sing and I speak out loud and I hope to Mama Uni my soulmate hears me because I hope to Mama Uni he knows what this feels like and has also experienced speaking to himself 90% of the time he's awake on any given day.

I know how to be alone when these things happen, because they do happen. And they happen to me.

I know how to be alone when the pain is so unbearable and my heart feels like it's been soaked in a bath full of molasses -heavy and sticky and would take days of constant scrubbing to come clean. When the lump in your throat and the welling of tears flood to your eyeballs like the rush of blood that has now turned your entire face into a large, freshly picked Roma tomato. And your clammy hands and your clammy feet and your short spurts of breath that only come out because you noticed you were holding it in and Jesus how long have I not been breathing?? And the chattering of your teeth and the anger that builds and builds and builds and the aching -oh the aching- somewhere deep down inside that you've kept buried for the last month has remerged on the scene like a zombie rising from the grave that is your dark and twisted soul no longer willing to stay contained. Waiting to jump from your flesh like the ghost you always felt you truly were. Leaving you with nothing but the thought that you are a shell of a human, a bottomless pit filled with the most empty feeling that you fear will never go away unless you get comfortable with "being alone."

Yeah, I've been there before.

So you repeat the cycle and try to ignore the fact that we are meant to connect and love and create and be out there in the world together and oh yeah, you are SO FUCKING SICK OF BEING ALONE.

Because you know nothing except for that feeling while going through the motions of what pure loneliness looks like.

And you get sad and frustrated and angry and you blame your parents for never showing you what any form of love -let alone unconditional love- looks like. And you blame the media and social conditioning for giving you insight to the questions your parents could never answer and sending mixed signals of what you should or shouldn't be in order to find happiness. And you secretly loathe your friends who somehow always know how to stumble into relationships with people who came "when I least expected it," as though their partners appeared out of thin air. And then you hate yourself because the law of attraction states that you've chosen this life of agony and pain and suffering and loneliness so repeat this healthy affirmation and goddammit why can't I just get my shit together and figure it out like everyone else has?

So you ride a wave of emotions that take you to a higher plane when you learn how to control your breathing and properly meditate and then bring you down to the fucking deepest depths of the ocean when you discover the beauty of life but remember you have no one to share it with. Rinse and repeat, my pruney phalanges, rinse and repeat.

You cleanse your Spirit with sage and palo santo on the daily and hope that if you're still enough, it will wash away whatever is wrong with you. Turning you into the woman you so desperately know in your heart of hearts you will one day become if you can just master your mind and wipe your dirty, dirty, soul clean.

And you never had someone tell you to believe in yourself except for yourself and only in your journal and only in your room and only in your head. in your mind. in your fantasies. alone. at night. by yourself. with no one.

So you stay there and retreat into oblivion and you sink deeper and deeper into that black mirror because they say that there are other worlds inside black holes so there's got to be a better one inside of me -better than this! Where do I go from here? Where do I find that which I am looking for? How am I supposed to get what I want if there are no voids to be filled except for the entire essence of my being because they say that change comes from within? If I know how to, if I already am, if my "getting comfortable" has already been mastered enough for 5 lifetimes, then what else is there for me beyond what it is to be alone?