Lonliness. What name do you know him by? Do you know him at all, or do you avoid eye contact pretending he’s just a figment…nothing more than a made up shadow cast upon your wall?
I know him personally. I’ve written about his face, his presence, his lesser qualities. I don’t know why, but to me he’s a him holding space by my side.
I used to know him in one dimension only. Covered in fear, he dressed up as the vision of death. Wearing black, faceless, and haunting my steps. He encompassed fear and tasted like the end. He followed me around, ever present in my shadow, haunting my future with seven letters that pushed together spelt out FOREVER.
Dressed in black for my death, he was prepared for my funeral, maybe so was I, haunting my steps, living under my bed, taunting me in my sleepless dreams, stealing away what didn’t belong to him. Ever present, just a breath or a step away from ruin, he alive sucking life from me casting daggers from the cover of my shadow. I learned to fear him. To make choices for life with him as my lead… was he alive in my shadow or was I in his?
Rejection. I said stop, I learned to hold a boundary. Stressed to the max, holding firm in my fear, he ceased to inhabit the edge of my bed, but I’ve learned in time he isn’t always dressed up in black and waiting at the edge of my bed…the color of my death.
I’ve found his name, lonliness without threat, dressed up in yellow, just like my tent. He feels comfortable and content, sleeping again at the edge of my bed, in the middle of nowhere wearing a new colored thread. He comforts me along with a blanket of stars, when the world gets quiet and demands fall apart. It’s just me and him, alone in my tent, or feeling the feels watching a glorious sunset. He’s consistent in showing up and sharing an intimate yet place of contented connected space of just him and I.
Here I am so small beneath a universe of stars, a galaxy of questions and a place marked for me, where answers loose merit and breathing counts for free. I find peace and harmony alone with the stars, wrapped up held safe in a blanket of yellow. I am small and yet large, I exist just for me, bound by fibers painted yellow like the sun, embraced with someone bigger than me, lonely adds a vowel next to me, changing to Alone that feels content lacking misery. Content and confined, lonliness doesn’t haunt, but holds a place next to affectionate space meant to feel small and big pressed together underneath the stars.
Then there’s red, a place I feel like I’d like to know more. A place on reserve for those conversations after dark. The place I imagine that yeilds connection and desire, shaped by life and maybe satin, roses and time reservered for pillow-talk made for two bodies together after the dark. Two souls connecting, really just being real, shared only together, edith no one else knowing, this piece that’s defined by years held captive from reality… just a dream. Lonliness he wakes me each morning with the sun, hazy from imagining all the moments i lived through alone in the dark. His face is red when he wakes me c replacing dreams of company with a single lonely expression. A smile for the space that he holds, for now marked by dreams of what I wish were more… romance I don’t know you, in your place I see him… loneliness trying to sustain the shape of a dream feeling of satin and lace, and the hope for romance.
Or maybe less vibrant watered down into pink. The cute thoughtful places where I wish I’d be for someone else’s thoughts to loom with significant creativity. A thoughtful expression, a special extension, a moment thought out deserving the label of “date”. Where time is slowed down and effort is made to look a certain way for someone else, a glance or a notice from yesterday that shows up again fully present today. More than attention meant only for a moment stolen for now like a common line an undesirable agenda. A caress, or a kiss, a special thoughtfulness, that’s flirty beyond platonic feelings…maybe leading to bliss?
I buy myself flowers about once a week. They make me happy and it’s easy to do, the small things and thoughtfulness of self care or extending a nice thing for myself. I don’t think much of it, but once the checker said “I’m sorry you have to but your own flowers” which for some reason put my on the defensive, ready to fight or stand up for myself, or make him feel better somehow the words rolling off of my lips so hollow ” oh no worries I do this all of the time.” I swallowed the space where lonliness reared its head, to bury the real estate he saw saving myself from the sorrow, public shame I felt, when Iin hindsight I said “so am I” filling the space I inferred, “I wish I felt special” with lonliness blotting in pink petals my lonely and sappy emotional tears.
And then there’s blue, like the moon lyre at night, like a homonym taking it’s own multiple meaning as its shape. Like the color of water, peaceful and comforting in its sound, representing a place that we all long for, the quiet absence of sound. The color of feeling that makes you long for a friend, or an embrace that has the power to last beyond the awkward and uncomfortable stage. A color that seeks a hand to hold, a familiar someone who might know the way, the ability to comfort, the company that won’t run away. Blue the color of a moment to often shared between myself and lonely due to conflicts with scheduling. Later reporting on the color blue, it looses its depth unavaianle for filling with platitudes and promises or delayed accessibility for a friend’s hand holding. Lonliness had already offered its in the moment marker, just me and him again lost to my feeling. This color blue only known as a feeling expressed to an audience of one once again, don’t worry I’ve got this once again as always, don’t fret over these tears that run down my face, I’m not alone with them, lonliness knows this place.
Sometimes blue changes his hue, donning a dress I feel less powerless as friends whom I trust open up robust with love and vulnerability, they hear, they see, they are familiar company for me in thor knowledge and experience adrift at sea with this known entity we’re all call lonliness. They gsther in pursuit to chase away the dark shadow of beat down my feelings colored black and blue. A simple SOS I served saying “I’m struggling, I’m hurting, I’m alone in the dark, big feelings, I’m drowning, Can you see me? Or hear me? Don’t leave me to the dark, I can’t bear the presence of lonliness’ haunting again in the dark.” I’ve learned to reach out to friends with the mark “purple heart”. This shape and color doesn’t haunt in the dark, his power is lost in magenta hues that buffer my fears. Lonliness looses power in the light of reaching out.
What about Orange? Do I know his face in that place? I’m not sure what this color represents for my space of healing or restoring, it feels layered by extorsion, exhaustion of too much extroversion. Company that takes away and leaves me with dread, a burning out feeling instead of fed. Orange is an escape, an easy walk away, but layered with threads of over compensation. Trying to ignore or cover up the beat that lonliness mostly fills me with. It’s not the amount of people in a room, the lack of depth not breadth that I feel left with. Shallow conversation, too many strangers, alone in a room that’s to loud to hear, or all the attention from too many beers leaving the one question “why am I here”? Lonliness found a friend pushing my integrity to be more like myself.
But what about green… mixed with brown? The color of vomit puked out on the ground…
Too much of a good thing, I need to reach out, caught up in my head and way too much of myself, lonliness takes a toll rolling my gut, where are my friends my means to get out? A muse, a passion a focus beyond this tiny little space of introverting too much. Lonliness wears a name tag label my “best fruend”, I can’t see the lie all alone in my bed on the couch with binge Netflix’s, where’s the balance called art? Mixing two colors doesn’t feel good…discontent and loneliness in the dark, all I can feel is watch out I need to…barf. Not sure where to step, too tired to clean up, I’ll jump over the mess until it makes sense to clean it up and start fresh. Chose one at a time, not nauseating mixed emotions.
What gave I learned from lonliness’ colorful expression? Lonliness is a multi fold, trifecta, a rainbow, not just an expression of dread, death or lack of emotion, but desire, contentment and dreams held in layers… not singing to fear like a storm cloud that hides, but maybe the joy of searching for rainbows.
All colors just as real, vibrant emotion, calling my name and shaping my story. The collection of lived black and white while stuck in Kansas, with brightness of dreams a desire found somewhere on the other side of a rainbow.
Lonliness or alone, what makes one real without the other? Time or space to listen and feel, or the desire to ignore the pain, constantly on the run? I’m alone and I’m happy, I’m alone and I’m sad, but at the end of the day I’m all things until my solo departure for this life on my dying day.
Lonliness has more than one face and I’m slowly learning the company of all his colorful faces, without judgment to find the place of deep contentment.
The Fish Eye 