Loneliness Is A Language

I saw you three times two weeks ago in the same day and later that day I threw up because of some bad white wine at brunch or was it because I saw you? This is why I hate brunch and white wine. And I can’t hate you. It wasn’t you either of those times and I knew that. This is what loneliness feels like, I’ve concluded. Feeling completely isolated in a train station full of people coming and going and me just stagnant, waiting for my legs to move. Waiting for you to move closer.

Moving fluidly, getting things done on a Sunday afternoon, smiling at the cashier while she rings my groceries through, weaving through traffic and trying not let the rain drops touch the exposed parts. Loneliness never leaves me even in the most chaotic moments or the most productive of Sundays, just like you. Every word, every syllable, each and every sentence constructed from my brain is spoken in the language that spouts love and longing like holy scripture. 

Loneliness and aloneness aren’t the same thing but they are birthed from the same imperfect parents. They are sisters and create states of longing, one for you, and one for a higher self. Aloneness allows me, gives me the permission, to truly see the person I am and also the person I want to be. I see her, myself, in every step I take, woven in the the clothing I fold, in the steam of the tea that steeps patiently, waiting for my lips. When I am alone, I cannot speak, I don’t need to. Nothing hurts, there is a dull shadow that lingers but it’s spotted with pockets of light, hope and faith in the simple act of me being truly here, present.

Loneliness is like a beast that waits for feelings to bubble up to the surface, things I’ve suppressed for minutes, days, weeks or months, years. Loneliness waits until I’m beyond alone, waits until I can’t handle the days’ events and the emotional stabs at my character from people that don’t deserve to be there in the first place. It attacks my soul and doesn’t stop until it draws blood and I am broken. My smile is tight, eyes vacant and I speak more than I listen. My stomach is in knots and I’m running away from everything I know. When I stop to take a breath, the words that fall out of my mouth is the language of loneliness. The desire for an existence that is outside of what I truly need. Arms that don’t matter and lips that take and never give. The language is jumbled and comes from a place of desperation. I’ve seen you three times and that’s where it comes from. I want you so bad that I can’t think or speak any other dialect, I speak your name more than my own. 

Everytime we see each other, you look at me like I’m a strange character speaking in tongues, expressions wild, hair a complete and effortless mess. I speak passionately, hiding the fact that all I want to do is touch every part of you that hurts. I want to heal myself, get rid of the hurt and understand what it’s like to be silent, finally silent. But you aren’t here so I speak to loneliness, like a soulmate, wrapping me up in warm blankets of false security and romantic sadness. The day is over and the night begins and I know that as each day passes the language that speaks your name and wants your touch and your laugh and eyelashes gets dull and distant. A new voice silently creeps up saying things I haven’t heard in years, the voice is my own and it feels like I might get through one more day saying my own name one more time than I say yours. You are destroyed in the fire that I am made of until one day I might see you again and the language I so proudly forget comes rushing back like it never left.