Loneliness into Solitude

 LONELINESS is akin to being swallowed by a swamp. You keep sinking deeper and deeper, and the weight above you only increases. You do not find a floor to gather yourself and stand up, to emerge. You let yourself be absorbed. 

This loneliness is worse than that of a beloved deserting you. It’s like finding out that the beloved is there but has never been in love with you. The heart stops for a moment. You don’t even feel the pain because it’s all over you, the skipping beat, the curled toes, the scrunched up lines on your forehead. The breaths are as short as a second count. Time has lost its significance. You are suspended, from functioning, from living, from the world. Just the weight increases as you keep sinking...

I am questioning everything — why people choose to get married, have kids, go to work, be at home, buy a house, travel and there’s no conclusive answer I can arrive at. Everything seems to be irrational. Is it what they call nihilism? Or am I going through an existential crisis — last felt in M. A psychology exam when I was completely unprepared for an exam on the same day? That existential crisis got over the moment I finished my examination. What about this one, when there’s no exam waiting with a sledgehammer for me?

Loneliness: a word as thick as it sounds. I am happy that they didn’t choose a smaller word to describe this feeling. Imagine, what if a word like boredom would have described this state. It would be so inept. It doesn’t hold the weight that the word loneliness carries. Loneliness, the L sitting and looking back at what’s behind it, unable to carry it any further. The word seems to have given up. Like a father looking at his dying child. Like a coach looking at their protégé stumbling in their last attempt at the race of their dreams. Like a lover, in a relationship, out of love. Only the word loneliness could appropriately describe the meaning it holds within. No amount of description can fill in.

Hoping tomorrow will be a better day. Tomorrow, what a beautiful word! To me, it looks like a truck with wheels embedded moving so fast that I can’t catch up. It looks like motion. I think I should start my journey. I’m sinking in the comfort and clutches of not moving. Moving is the only way to not sink. Today, as I pack my bags to leave, I want to share a quote that I once wrote but finding it difficult to practice today: ‘You are not creative until you know how to turn your loneliness into solitude.’ .. . ..