Loneliness

It's a funny thing, that emotion.  It feels sinister and makes me panic and I grab blankets or chocolate or search the room wildly for busywork.  Like someone's got a gun to my head.  I. have. got. to. get. this. done. I say through focused scary brain because I'm afraid to look up from what I'm doing.  I'm afraid something might grab me that I don't see.

Loneliness moves into my space when I feel like I've lost something. It sits in my favorite chair and mocks me.  I can be surrounded by friends at church, the kind that mean what they say, and still I feel alone.  Lonely is a liar. It robs me of what's real and tries to get me to believe that what I've lost is all I had.

It also shames me.  How strange it is that I'd rather admit a character flaw than the emotion of lonely.  There's a certain sense of compulsion to convince that life is a commercial and who me?  Lonely?  Don't be ridiculous.  I am blessed.  Blessed, I tell you.  Call me blessed.  I don't have time to be lonely.  See my smiling pictures of Facebook with all the people who love me??  That's why I put them there.

But the truth is.......lonely doesn't look at my watch or my calendar.  It doesn't care what you think of me.  It rushes in unawares when it sees me vulnerable.  And threatens to take me down; to build a plexiglass wall around me that I can't reach past and no one else can see but me.  And I start to feel mute and listless.  And even my arms feel weak so I can't wave a white flag.

I just wanted to let you know.  Sometimes I feel lonely.