If you
are at first lonely, be patient. If you've not been alone much, or if when you
were, you weren't okay with it, then just wait. You'll find it's fine to be
alone once you're embracing it.
We could
start with the acceptable 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 and smell the books. You're
not supposed to talk much anyway so it's safe there.
There's
also the gym. If you're shy you could hang out with yourself in mirrors, you
could put headphones in (guitar stroke).
And
there's public transportation, because we all gotta go places.
And
there's prayer and meditation. No one will think less if you're hanging with
your breath seeking peace and salvation.
Start
simple. Things you may have previously (electric guitar plucking) based on your
avoid being alone principals.
The
lunch counter. Where you will be surrounded by chow-downers. Employees who only
have an hour and their spouses work across town and so they -- like you -- will
be alone.
Resist
the urge to hang out with your cell phone.
When you
are comfortable with eat lunch and run, take yourself out for dinner. A
restaurant with linen and silverware. You're no less intriguing a person when
you're eating solo dessert to cleaning the whipped cream from the dish with
your finger. In fact some people at full tables will wish they were where you
were.
Go to
the movies. Where it is dark and soothing. Alone in your seat amidst a fleeting
community.
And
then, take yourself out dancing to a club where no one knows you. Stand on the
outside of the floor till the lights convince you more and more and the music
shows you. Dance like no one's watching...because, they're probably not. And,
if they are, assume 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 squirrels will watch for you.
Go to an
unfamiliar city, roam the streets, there're always statues to talk to and
benches made for sitting give strangers a 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've never happened had you not been there by
yourself
Society
is afraid of alonedom, 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 breaths easy and weightless and lonely is healing if you make
it.
You
could stand, swathed by groups and mobs or hold hands with your partner, look
both further and farther for the endless quest for company. But no one's in
your head and by the time you translate your thoughts, some essence of them may
be lost or 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. Cuz if you're happy in your head than solitude is blessed and alone is
okay.
It's
okay if no one believes like you. All experience is unique, no one has the same
synapses, can't think like you, for this be releived, keeps things interesting
lifes magic things in reach.
And it
doesn't mean you're not connected, that communitie's not present, just take the
perspective you get from being one person in one head and feel the effects of
it. take silence and respect it. If you have an art that needs a practice, stop
neglecting it. if your family doesn't get you, or religious sect is not meant
for you, don't obsess about it.
You
could be in an instant surrounded if you needed it
If your
heart is bleeding make the best of it
There is
heat in freezing, be a testament.
(I love this poem. I hope you enjoy it as well!)
