So loneliness is an interesting thing......I am keenly aware, and feel I have learned through this......... that it has nothing to do with being alone.......I think lots of times we link the two together......like if you are alone that is the only time you can be lonely......but I can honestly say I have not felt as lonely on any day since he left, than I did some days inside of my marriage......with him right beside me........being lonely when somebody is near you is the worst kind of loneliness there is I think......to feel like you cannot access your person in the ways you want.....or the ways you wish.....or feeling as if you are screaming to be heard on a busy subway platform, and nobody is listening, and everybody is walking right on by.......yeah I don't feel any of that now.....I am also aware that the presence of my children certainly contributes to my ability to enjoy being on my own these days.....they keep my busy and entertained for sure.......and I am guessing if the house were empty it may be challenging in a different way......and maybe loneliness would come to find me? hard to say............but on any given day I don't feel lonely.......there are only times I am lonely for spaces......to share a conversation with an adult.......share a beer......a day of yard work.....sitting in the sunshine on the deck......telling somebody something exciting that happened......sharing my children with somebody....sharing my bed with someone......sharing some parts of life with another human in an intimate way.....and it isn't in the missing way so much as in the way I felt in those places.......so in my day to day I don't sit in my home and ache for those places.....they just come to find me once in awhile in a random memory or on the wings of a twinge......remembering a part of my life that is gone forever in the wind.......a place I can never return to......and sometimes that is hard......and sometimes it is random the way it finds me.......like I actually think to myself "Where did that come from?" And I constantly walk this line between honoring and recognizing how painful and awful so much of what has happened to me is, and being eternally grateful that it happened......it is a crazy line to walk......and when I am lonely, it is not for him......because truth is I am not sure who I would be lonely for.....so much of what I believed about him wasn't true......however there is a version of him.....deep in my heart......that pricks me in ways that hurt deeply......and that is hard......that is the man that I miss sometimes, the deepest parts of who I believe he is at his core......but even in the awareness and the missing I know it is not for me.....not even close......our paths have always been pretty different but now the contrast is vast and stark.....I am grateful I am not lonely....and that I enjoy my own company and that of my children.....because the times I did feel that way inside of my marriage were really painful.....and I am happy that I never need to feel that way again:)
jperuso
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