Alone

Some days I am so full of loneliness it hurts.

Today is one of those days.

It begins as I see the disconnect between me and the world. People thank me for existing, for doing or saying something that I no longer remember. My responses are honest and sincere, yet fall short as my feelings fail.

I see people talking. Laughing. Smiling. Making connections and building new friendships, adding sparks to fires or simply chatting with someone nearby. The pain begins to grow. I try to make a friend or to join a conversation and feel numb inside. People talk with me and my eyes start watering. I realize I need to be alone or else I'm going to cry.

I run away. Hide in my car, or my room, and cry. It courses through me and makes it hard to breathe. I wonder if dying would make it stop. I don't even want to write the obligatory side note that suicide is wrong because I literally want to die.

It's hard to think, to move, to do anything. All my coping strategies for anything go out the window and I am transfixed with pain so intense I just sob.

Minutes pass. Hours. Sometimes it gets worse when I thought it was as bad as it could get. I wonder why I'm feeling this way, and how I can function in life on any other day. I don't want to be around anyone at all.

Today someone I didn't know well texted me out of the blue. So did my best friend. While it didn't lessen the pain, I took those to mean that God cares about me even when I feel completely alone. I remembered that pain is just a tool and began writing about it. I fell asleep crying.

Pain - even overwhelming loneliness - is just a tool. It's just a series of chemicals in my brain. A tool for what though? I am hurting so much it's hard to even think straight. What am I supposed to learn? How am I supposed to change? 

I guess if I am hurting and lonely, that means that someone else in the world is probably hurting too. Someone else, somewhere, could feel the exact same way.

That sounds beyond miserable.

How are they doing? And is there anything I can do to help? Wait. Being around people makes it worse.

I could easily see drinking myself into oblivion right now if I were an alcoholic. Gambling. Sex. Drugs. Anything to make the feeling go away. But those would just lead to numbness. There's no way that drugs or breaking the law of chastity are going to make me feel less lonely.

Perhaps I am just missing Heaven. Or maybe God wants to remind me that He is the only One I can always turn to in life. Maybe I'm supposed to reach out soon to someone else who needs me. Or maybe I'm supposed to write about it in the hopes that it will help someone else that God loves.

I still can't bring myself to attend family dinner, even though I'll be gone for weeks in Mexico. I'm still curled up in a ball, and it's only marginally easier to breathe. But I know that God loves me. 

And right now that's enough.