The World Spins; We Stumble.

I hung out with some friends the other day. We all lay on the couch and spoke of our latest dilemmas. Of course, I remained silent of my issues. How could I speak of you to them? What would they think? I’m afraid they might leave me if I say anything. So, I won’t. 

I envy them and their unknowingly simple life. Their tale is quite simple. Girl meets boy. Boy ignores girl. Boy meets girl. Girl doesn’t know what to do. Blah.

I’ve noticed how much I’ve changed from them. I’ve grown. And I’m afraid I’ve left them behind. I was once like them, fearful that I was never good enough for this person I thought I liked, obsessed with fitting in.

Well, you get the idea. 

I wish things were that simple in my life. It seems in the course of a year without them, I changed into a whole new person. Its because of you. YOU. You did this to me. They whine about their boy troubles. I want to show them how trivial it all seems.

But, quite frankly, that’d be rude.

I had a dream the other night. A dream of which i cant seem to get out of my head. I’m constantly replaying the moment over and over. It never seems to stop. I woke up. the last thing I remember seeing is your face. You smiled and reached to grab my face. But I woke up startled before I knew why. I woke up to find a girl next to me. and it wasn’t you. I felt disappointed. Not at you, or her, but at myself. I told myself I wasn’t going to be like this anymore. Just the thought of you brings me back. This is going to be harder than I thought.

Why did it happen? What is my sub conscience trying to tell me? Why did i ever wake up? I wish I would’ve lived that moment. The feel of your lips on the back of my neck. The warmth of the weight of your body against mine. It was invigorating. It felt real. So real. So natural.

But it was all a dream.

I stared at the emptiness of the bed I lay in. I tried to picture your face in front me. We would look into each other. you smiled. How your hair would lay gracefully down your shoulders. You would play with my fingers and the palm of my hand. I would trace the outline of that face of yours. Brush your hair behind your ear. You would close your eyes, and marinate in the moment. I opened mine. and you were gone. I have longed for the night you would open my door and lay down next to me. Holding me. With your breath on my neck.  

This is wrong.

“If you are, at first lonely, be patient. If you’ve not been alone much, or if when you were, you were not okay with it, then just wait. You’ll find that it’s fine to be alone once you’re embracing it.

We can start with the expectable places, the bathroom, the coffee shop, the library. Where you can stall and read the paper. Where you can get your caffeine fix and sit and stay there. Where you can browse the stacks of books, you’re not supposed to talk much anyway, so it’s safe there. and there’s public transportation, because we all have to go places. And there’s prayer and meditation. No one will think less of your hanging breath seeking peace and salvation.

Start simple. Things you may have previously avoided based on your avoid being alone principles.

Take yourself out for dinner to a restaurant with linen and silverware. You’re no less intriguing a person when you’re eating solo dessert and cleaning the whipped cream from the dish with your finger. In fact, some people in full tables would wish they were where you were.

Go to the movies, where it is dark and soothing alone in your seat amongst a fleeting community. And then, take yourself out dancing to a club where no one knows you. Stand on the outside of the floor until the lights convince you more and more and the music shows you. Dance like no one is watching, because they are probably not. And if they are, assume that it is with best of human intentions. The way bodies move genuinely to beats is, after all, gorgeous and affecting. Dance until you’re sweating and beads of perspiration remind you of life’s best things, down your back like a brook of blessings.

Go to the woods alone and the trees and birds will watch for you. Go to an unfamiliar city. Roam the streets, there’s always a statue to talk to, and benches made for sitting give the shared existence if only for a minute. And these moments can be so uplifting and the conversations you get in by sitting alone on benches might have not ever happened if you had not been there by yourself.

Society is afraid of alone though. Like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements, like people must have problems if, after a while, nobody is dating them. But lonely is a freedom that breeds easy and weightless and lonely is healing if you make it.

Look both further and farther in the endless quest for company. But no ones in your head, and by the time your thoughts, some essence of them may be lost, or maybe perhaps it is just kept.

Perhaps in the interest of loving oneself, perhaps all those sappy slogans from preschool over to high school’s groaning were tokens for holding the lonely at bay. Because if you’re happy in your head, then solitude is blessed and alone is okay.

It’s okay if no one believes like you. All experiences are unique, no one has the same synapses, can’t think like you. For this be relieved, keeps things interesting and life’s magic things in reach. Just take the perspective you get from being one person in one head and the effects of it.

Take silence and respect it. If you have an art that needs practice, stop neglecting it. If your family doesn’t get you or a religious sect that is not meant for you, then don’t obsess about it. You could be, in an instant, surrounded if you need it. If your heart is bleeding, make the best of it. There is heat and freezing, be a testament.”

                                                                           -Tanya Davis