alone
You never quite forget it, do you? That one feeling that everyone must know by virtue of being alive.
This feeling is a universal one. It is not love or hope or friendship that carries across to all, but instead this. A dark, grey feeling that no one ever wants to claim and all want to escape if only they knew how.
It's a horrible feeling, one that few ever really bring up outside of therapy sessions and occasional disclosures to those closest to the heart. It's a feeling that everyone knows and tries to forget. Or worse still, it's a feeling that becomes so familiar it entrenches itself into the heart and becomes a mire where all hope dies a lingering, rotting death.
It is the feeling of being lost. Of being completely alone and without any hope for help. It's the panic of a child who turns around only to see that their parent isn't there, or the crazed frenzy of a puppy locked away from its people. Please, it screams, I'm alone and I'm scared and please help me!
It is a dark feeling. A horrible one. It clamps onto the heart in a vice-grip from the very moment the loss of whatever safety net is realized. For some it grants a death by inches - for those so long abandoned that it becomes second nature to feel as if no help is ever coming, that hope is the vice of fools and those who wish for a whimsical death by dreaming. For others it is a flash fire of panic and terror - a child crying in the corner because they're lost and don't know where their parents are, or perhaps a woman standing alone in a street because she forgot which turn to take and she doesn't have her cellphone and she doesn't know what to do now.
It is a feeling known to all, whether admitted or not. It is a desperate race we run to try and outpace it - to keep ourselves safe enough to where we feel that that particular notion of losthopelessalone need no longer apply. We surround ourselves with people and things and events and ideas to try and beat back that notion of that deep aloneness. The irony is that the more one tries to escape the more aware they are of the threat, whether admitted or vehementaly denied. It is the wolf at the door, staring in over the threshold with eyes aglow with promise.
My time will come. I will return. I will find you.
It does not fade as childhood passes into a stranger, bigger world of responsibility and loss. There are those who would say they were able to think their way out of such emotional traps as soon as they stepped into the adult world. Such claims are nice to hold, comforting to cling to when uncertain, but they are not true. They are pretty falsehoods dressed up in ribbons of logic and sense.
Inevitably that person, with those ribbons and pretty china premises all tucked up in their hands and held so very close, will become lost. Will lose something or someone they never thought they would, or simply have the world tilt in a way they never expected it to do.
On that day, look to their hands. Suddenly the falsehood will begin to crumble away like sand, trailing sad ribbons of you are still human and you are alone. That day will find that person staring up into the sky or down at their empty hands, eyes wide and troubled and so very alone.
This feeling is a universal one. It is not love or hope or friendship that carries across to all, but instead this. A dark, grey feeling that no one ever wants to claim and all want to escape if only they knew how.
It's a horrible feeling, one that few ever really bring up outside of therapy sessions and occasional disclosures to those closest to the heart. It's a feeling that everyone knows and tries to forget. Or worse still, it's a feeling that becomes so familiar it entrenches itself into the heart and becomes a mire where all hope dies a lingering, rotting death.
It is the feeling of being lost. Of being completely alone and without any hope for help. It's the panic of a child who turns around only to see that their parent isn't there, or the crazed frenzy of a puppy locked away from its people. Please, it screams, I'm alone and I'm scared and please help me!
It is a dark feeling. A horrible one. It clamps onto the heart in a vice-grip from the very moment the loss of whatever safety net is realized. For some it grants a death by inches - for those so long abandoned that it becomes second nature to feel as if no help is ever coming, that hope is the vice of fools and those who wish for a whimsical death by dreaming. For others it is a flash fire of panic and terror - a child crying in the corner because they're lost and don't know where their parents are, or perhaps a woman standing alone in a street because she forgot which turn to take and she doesn't have her cellphone and she doesn't know what to do now.
It is a feeling known to all, whether admitted or not. It is a desperate race we run to try and outpace it - to keep ourselves safe enough to where we feel that that particular notion of losthopelessalone need no longer apply. We surround ourselves with people and things and events and ideas to try and beat back that notion of that deep aloneness. The irony is that the more one tries to escape the more aware they are of the threat, whether admitted or vehementaly denied. It is the wolf at the door, staring in over the threshold with eyes aglow with promise.
My time will come. I will return. I will find you.
It does not fade as childhood passes into a stranger, bigger world of responsibility and loss. There are those who would say they were able to think their way out of such emotional traps as soon as they stepped into the adult world. Such claims are nice to hold, comforting to cling to when uncertain, but they are not true. They are pretty falsehoods dressed up in ribbons of logic and sense.
Inevitably that person, with those ribbons and pretty china premises all tucked up in their hands and held so very close, will become lost. Will lose something or someone they never thought they would, or simply have the world tilt in a way they never expected it to do.
On that day, look to their hands. Suddenly the falsehood will begin to crumble away like sand, trailing sad ribbons of you are still human and you are alone. That day will find that person staring up into the sky or down at their empty hands, eyes wide and troubled and so very alone.