I was little. I cared about nuclear war, and Satan, and the things that made my basement make noises when everyone else was asleep. I would lay by the wall register and wait for the heat to turn on. I would listen to the little dings and bangs that would happen moments before I would feel relief from the loudness of silence and fall into my own little comfort, as the heat would wrap itself around my face and warm everything under my blanket on the floor. I had a bed and my own room, but there was something about sleeping on the floor next to that heat register in the same room as my mother that I could not resist. My mom didn't mind, I think we were both lonely.
Loneliness is the thing. It's that terrible feeling so deep in your stomach that sometimes you can't even feel it at all. Sometimes you go about your day just as normal as the last, but feel terrible with dread. You shrug it off and do it again the next day. It creeps in and quietly makes you unhappy and discontent.
The absolute worst is when loneliness makes you think about the most precious and beautiful memories you have ever had and yearn to repeat them. You listen to songs that remind you of when you were happy and you get sad and your stomach starts to hurt, like a child's hurt in a department store when they have lost their mother. You ask something like wanting to go back and just watch it happen. You don't want to change it, you just want to feel it again.
The truth is that those times weren't so great. We tend to forget the reasons we wanted to be grown ups then. We forget the things that made us lonely then. Our lives are better now.
We have to try not to live in the past. Find a heater and lay next to it for a while until it turns off. When it turns off, you remember the cold distance between hot and cold. Then you have to wait in anguish. Loneliness leaves you in anguish.
Instead, find the things that make you warm, like your husband, or wife, or kids, or a place you once were happy and go there. Or buy a space heater and run it until it burns down your house. Either way, there is nothing wrong with comfort, just be comforted in the things that last.
Sing.
Migrate.
Thanks for reading...Z
