Finding Love Through Loneliness
The world we need to travel is the world within our hearts.
These past two years have been incredibly difficult for me.
They’ve been filled with endless cycles of grief, heartbreak, and loneliness.
The person I was two years ago and the person I am now are completely unrecognizable. I finally feel like I’m catching my breath.
Before the world got turned upside down, I was always chasing the next adventure. Always searching, never settled.
I’d always considered myself an explorer, a wanderer, a lone wolf.
I never thought anything of it.
I never even imagined a time when my life would have to slow down.
But then everything changed.
The world stopped, and there were no more adventures I could embark on.
No more plans I could make or highs I could chase.
Everything I’d always known came crashing down.
The constant chase for adventure shaped who I was, and truthfully, I didn’t know who I was without it. But even during my greatest adventures, there was a giant sense of loneliness that filled my life.
Even during my happiest moments, I could always feel it just a few feet away.
Over time I became an expert at silencing it, always filling my life with travels and adventures.
I was used to fighting off my loneliness, but never during a time when the world stopped. I had always had distractions, always had ways to escape. But then everything changed, and all the ways I used to escape were taken away.
I could no longer silence the loneliness.
After months of fighting and trying to pretend it was just a phase, I realized I had no choice but to do the one thing I never allowed myself to.
I had to finally face the feelings I’d been running from my whole life.
These past two years have given me more stillness than I was ready for.
But they’ve also brought me a sense of clarity I never had before.
I learned that I didn’t need to keep traveling across seas to explore the world.
What I needed was to stop running from the one within.
The thing I had been running from my whole life, the thing I thought would destroy me, just needed me to set it free. It’s been one year since I finally stopped running, and it’s been the wildest, most thrilling adventure of my life.
For years, it felt like I was running through an endless maze with my loneliness just a few feet behind me.
But while I was growing tired and weak, my loneliness only grew stronger.
Finally, I stopped. I looked my loneliness in the face and let it walk the short distance that had been between us my whole life.
My loneliness was never planning on leaving my side.
I’d be lying to say it’s all been transformative and empowering.
There are times when I feel like my loneliness has completely taken over me.
When it’s all I can feel.
But then there are days when I feel a deep sense of peace.
A sense of clarity and understanding I’ve never felt before.
The feelings I had been traveling across seas to search for, were right inside me, buried beneath my loneliness.
All along, I thought it was my loneliness that was chasing me.
When really, it was the most intense form of love I’ve ever felt.
These past two years have been an entirely new way of living, exploring parts of myself I never have before. Letting the parts of myself I once considered broken, be part of life’s adventure.
Passion and pain.
Sadness and confusion.
Endings and beginnings.
I’m learning as I go, but now that I’ve started, I can never stop.
I’m allowing myself to explore every piece of life.
And while I know this journey may not look like the one’s before.
In the end, it will be the greatest adventure of my life.
To feel deeper into this piece, read the paired poem Healing Through Heartbreak
