Solitude Perpétuelle
Loneliness has followed me like a close friend throughout my life. It has wiped my tears in hard times, hugged me as a comfort in happy ones, and wrapped itself around me as the weather gets cold and the sadness chips at my soul. Loneliness is a feeling that I have grown to appreciate and recognize as a part of me.
For me, it is the feeling of staring into the ocean. So overwhelming and consuming that I feel like I could jump right into it and be swept away. An unsettling amount of silence, like I am listening to the white noise in my mind that I have been desperately trying to drown out with melodies and the sounds of my friends voices.
But, the ocean is full of creatures from right below the surface all the way down to the Earth’s core; music is filled with vibrant sounds and feelings that break the silence in my heart, and my friends are full of love and wisdom that fills me with joy. While I may feel lonely in my mind, I feel at peace in my heart with what is surrounding me. The cold of my thoughts is flushed away by the warmth on my skin and the rush of life sweeping me away.
In our day and age, our lives are loud and bustling with things to do, people to see, places to go, dreams to dream, and this can be lonely. It is lonely to feel like just another face in an endless sea of people with lives and dreams and thoughts just like yours. To feel like your hopes and feelings are meaningless in the expansive, nothingness that is reality and time. Existence can be terrifying.
But look around at the smiles mirroring yours and the voices of people who love you and soak in that in this moment in time, you are real. The love that people feel for you and the happiness that comes with it is real. Life is short, and while we are all staring down the barrel of our own mortality, let's enjoy it. This season let us all savor the warm hugs, the sounds of leaves crunching, and the vibrance of a good book.
And to all of you I want to say, loneliness is okay. It is okay to feel alone even if your life is supposedly perfect and you have a million people cheering you on. You do not have to justify your feelings for the sake of making others comfortable.
Strike Out,
Written by: Kushi Zaver
Edited by: Sarah Singleton
Graphic by: Gus Gaston
