Well, she thought, let it pass; winter is over, winter is over.
(There are all kinds of love in the world but never the same love twice.)
Mid-March in California, the changing of the seasons. And with it, hazy skies on the forecast once more. What is it about springtime that launches me into this state of ambivalence? The season for renewal, rebirth, rechristening — how ironic it all is.
I ache, yet refuse to rest. I dream, yet remain put. I want so badly for the good things to happen, yet I sabotage every glimmer of good that comes my way. Loneliness rips at my core, and I let it.
I am a walking paradox, a daydreaming mess of a girl.
Are they really so blind, the whole lot, that they are able to look me in the eyes and sense nothing wrong? Am I really such a grand puppeteer, a master manipulator of expression and word, that I am able to wade through the days as though nothing is wrong?
I am spinning in circles, and the momentum is dizzying.
There is nothing left for me but my words. Yet these days, even the refuge of the written word feels insufficient, void of buoyancy to keep me afloat in this riptide that refuses to wane.
The hour is 2am, and I am at low ebb.
God, why can’t I express myself the way I want to? The way I need to? Why does writing feel stilted, stinted, every word a shoddy faux pas in the face of God herself?
If it feels right, say it.
If it is true, even true only to you, say it.
Write of your own experiences, so that others might know the blood they shed is not their own. And if it all comes out horribly wrong, so be it.
The opposite of love is indifference — silence, the enemy of expression.
Write, write, write, damn you, just write. If this loneliness insists on devouring me alive — and it does — very well then. I will write through the bloodshed. I will write, so that whoever may stumble upon these words will know — the monster is real, and the monster is shared.
If you are lonely, know you are not alone.
I am lonely, but I am not alone.
Earlier tonight, I was overcome by a strange, sinking feeling. I’d been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit by the ocean.
And so I went. I sat by the shoreline and I let her teach me. How to be static. How to want without reckless abandon, how to dream despite the wariness dragging at my soul. And most importantly, how to accept the constant ebb and flow of life, in spite of cliché.
And as I watched the waves crash underneath the pale March moon, I felt a sense of connection I had not felt in ages.
Man is doomed to an existence of solitude — this I still stubbornly hold true. But paradoxically, it is this very experience of solitude that binds us as one. Loneliness, the single thread woven into the silk of every soul which steers our every movement — whether those movements will string us together or tear us apart is a conscious decision we are free to make.
As I write these words, I am very much alone. A lonesome soul holed up inside a tiny apartment in a big city, I am but a speck on the globe.
These words may go unread, condemned to die in a cosmic, digital purgatory. But write anyway, I shall. There is solace to be found in solitude, and it starts here — in writing, in sharing, in breaking the silence. This shared experience of loneliness may very well drain us of our selves, but only if we let it.
I write, in spite of loneliness.
I write, in hopes that these words might sound through the silence and resonate beyond these walls. And I write in hopes that whoever might read these words — whoever you are, wherever you may be — might follow suit.
If you have something to say, write.
If it is true, even true only to you, write.
As if it is all you have.
You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.
— F. Scott. Fitzgerald
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