There was a time in my not so distant past when I was lonely. In fact I was desperately empty. I also don’t think I’m immune to feeling that way in the near or far future. But the thing about loneliness is that it is a figment of my imagination. It’s the idea that no one loves me, can love me or no one cares.
I moved recently to a new city. I live with and near family. I’ve lived here a year but I haven’t made friends yet, and I have no love interests. I in my 20s and noticing people around me, friends and otherwise, getting married, having children, and departing from their solitary life to join with another’s. It felt easy to feel lonely until I realized that my not having companionship intimately or in friendship is my decision. I want to make friends and meet a partner, but I want them to be people who I want to spend time with, and who want to spend time with me.
Without other people, we still have ourselves. We can only feel lonely if we don’t tend to our own emotions. I understand this now because the more I open myself up to whatever feelings I’ve buried within myself, the more I realize that I am inherently connected to humanity. I am alone, but not lonely. Also, bleak or not, we’re all going to die. I’m not one for afterlives, so what I try to find fulfillment in is my waking days. I’m not sure if I’ll find someone to marry or live with. I’m not sure that if I do find someone, they won’t cheat on me, or pass away in a tragic and untimely manner.
But if this does happen, I’ll still have myself. My father always told me-“You live alone, and you die alone. You need to be there for yourself”. I never thought this was sad. I took it matter-of-factly, probably the way he intended it to sound. It’s actually one of the most romantic and poetic things that I know. I believe romance is something that you believe in… like a religion.
Romance is just the idea of beauty. So, a life of self-love is one of the most bleeding-heart romantic things I’ve ever heard of.
IamaBaldWoman 