It’s time to stop fighting loneliness

Micaela McLaughlin
Aug 9, 2017 · 2 min read

It’s 3:30 in the morning and there’s still a few people hanging out in the lobby as I near the end of the graveyard shift. Twenty nine more minutes until I can go to sleep. To keep my sleep-deprived mind awake I listen to a recording of a friend singing a song he wrote, in it he proclaims the words “I’m not alone.” Again and again he sings out these three words, the desire to believe that they are true betrayed in his tone.

A week ago when I first heard the song, I felt so connected to him as I listened to this recording of someone I care about express something that I too wrestle so deeply with — aloneness. Knowing even the small bit of his restless heart that I do, hearing his struggle in such a ardent musical rendition makes me feel like I know him far better than I do and probably ever will. But I feel like I know him because of the emotion I felt the first time I ever heard him sing.

It was as though the feelings of loneliness I have fought so hard for so much of my life were finally validated. I heard the desire to believe such a powerful truth in his voice, and knew that his heart fights this notion just as much as mine. I could finally breath.

I’m not the only one.

Someone else feels alone. And someone else is fighting hard to believe that it isn’t true.

“But when are you going to stop fighting, and just be?”

I hear the words whispered in my soul as I sit here, now 3:44am.

The doubts creep in. I can’t stop fighting, because then the loneliness will win. It will overwhelm and consume me.

“No, it won’t. Because I am right here. I always have been.”

I want so badly to believe that is true. My heart longs to stop trying so hard and to let go, to see and feel and know and believe that God is here with me, and he always has been and always will be. I just need to stop trying to fight the loneliness and just be.

To truly believe that I am not alone.

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