Mastering the Art of Loneliness

I am a conundrum. 

There are so many aspects of myself that I question. 

Here are some examples: 

I am bisexual with a preference for women, yet here I am in a healthy, loving, committed eleven-year relationship with a man who I love more than a hobbit loves The Shire and food.

I love my family, and yet I don’t speak with them much at all.

I enjoy writing, and yet I am lacking inspiration.

But my personal favorite: 

I thrive in my alone time, yet I am starting to drown in the Lake of Loneliness. 

For years I swore off allowing others into my life, and for the most part, I still do this to this very day.

I have told myself day in and day out that my husband and my best friends were all that I needed, but then there are glitches in the matrix where I realize that I am actually lonely. 

I crave friends. 

I crave interactions.

I crave developing and maintaining relationships with others. 

And yet here I am, twenty-seven with a husband and two friends who are my family. 

The issue remains: “Am I actually lonely or do I want what others have?”

I think it is a little bit of both.

I am a difficult pill to swallow.

I am highly opinionated.

I can be clingy.

I have a million ideas and I want each one to come alive.

I don’t sugar coat things.

I ask the questions that most people don’t want to answer.

See the problem with knowing that you aren’t really likeable is knowing that you aren’t really likeable. 

My issue is that it is hard for me to put on a mask. 

Some people can hide everything that they are feeling and thinking with ease, but I just can’t do that.

I don’t like confrontation, but I also don’t like bullshit. 

As the kids used to put it: I am not fake. 

You get what you get with me. 

I also am not the type of person that trusts someone right off of the bat.

Some may say that this is a coping mechanism due to previous trauma.

Like I am building a wall against my fragile soul to protect myself from getting hurt.

But I just think it is being smart. 

I am being cautious, sure. 

But I am just being smart.

So here we are.

Faults and flaws filled to the rim. 

And I am confused by my emotions.

Do I want more friends or is this another glitch?

I think I want more friends.

I think I am done with mediocre friends though.

I don’t want acquaintances. 

I don’t want friends that I meet up for coffee with to say hi for an hour once every other month. 

No.

I want relationships.

I want a friendship where we can sit on one of our couches and have deep conversations about the world.

I want a friendship where I can trust and rely on them and vice versa.

I want a friendship where we can feel safe around each other.

Where it feels like that friendship was destined.

Like you are soulmates in the friend realm. 

I have had relationships like this, and they are beautiful.

Your life becomes a little bit better than before.

You start to smile a little more often.

But more times than not, they dwindle away.

I am over that.

I want something that lasts.

I want a true friendship. 

I have mastered the art of loneliness.

Now I want to conquer the world of relationships. 

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Conquer the Fear

I have always had a funny relationship with dreams. Not the kind of dreams where your mind tells you stories while you slumber, but the kind of dreams that you wish you could make happen. The goals that run through your mind constantly. The kind of dreams that make you think “it would be so cool if this could happen for me.” I have had a couple of those dreams, the kind where I constantly say “I wish” to, and I always wondered if I would be brave enough to try to make my dreams become a reality.

I have spoken about this before, but for as long as I can remember, my biggest dream was to become a writer. I don’t even need to be an extremely successful writer, but a writer nonetheless. I wanted to share stories, life lessons, and informative pieces. I wanted to be able to write something that someone out there could relate to. I wanted my words to start a dialogue between strangers, bringing all of us together in some sort of way. I wanted to come up with fictional stories that could captivate an audience and have them asking for more. I have longed for my imagination to take me to a place in my career that I could be proud of, but there was one thing standing in my way. Fear. 

I take that back. Fear wasn’t the only thing keeping me from trying to accomplish my dream, but it definitely was the biggest factor. I always told myself that if I were to ever try to make something out of myself through my writing that I would put every ounce of energy into it. Everything that I have would be dedicated to this one massive dream of mine. However, the circumstances that I was in both financially and mentally would prevent me from being able to do that, that is, until recently. 

Finances have been a strain for Stephen and me for many years. It seemed like every time we were able to save money and feel like we were finally getting to a place of financial stability something would happen that would wash that sense of security straight away. “It’s just a part of life.” “Welcome to being an adult.” “No one ever said that growing up would be easy.” That is what people would tell me about the unfortunate cost of being alive. Also, let’s not forget the worst day of the year for people who rely on medications to live: January 1st. Being a type one diabetic is incredibly expensive, and January 1st is the day that your deductible resets. It always feels like a slap in the face when you have to worry about paying for an insurance premium, a deductible, and the medication that you need in order to keep breathing. A major thanks to my pancreas for adding that stressor to my life. Anyways, I had to work at jobs that I absolutely loathed in order to get by, much like the majority of our society. While I would work, I would fantasize about one day being able to write and have my words be read by the world, but by the time that I would come home from work I had little to no energy to put into my dream. It was a vicious cycle. Work. Dream. Fantasize. Go home. Crash. Repeat.

When it comes to my mentality, I always wanted to have the energy to just make my dream happen. I knew that in order for my writing to flourish I had to put in the work. I knew from the beginning that if you want something in this world that it won’t be handed to you, and if you want it bad enough one day it could be yours. But you have to work for it. I never wanted anything to just be handed to me, but I was too emotionally drained to be able to work towards my goal. As I said, I HATED all of my previous jobs, and they made me feel worthless. I felt like such a disappointment, and it sunk my self-worth to basically nothing. I was already dealing with depression and anxiety, so feeling down on myself for my career left me with nothing. And when you already lack any sort of energy, when you feel like you are sucked dry of everything that you are, you just go into survival mode. I was a walking zombie, just living life on autopilot. When you are in that mode, you just don’t have the extra energy to put into “extra” luxuries, such as accomplishing a dream. You’re just trying to stay alive. 

Eventually, finances started to become better, and with a ton of work, so did my emotional stability. I entered the unexplored territory in my life where I had an option to quit my paying job in order to try to make my dream come true. I never, ever imagined in my entire twenty-six years on this planet that I would ever have this opportunity as an option, and now that it could be a possibility it scared the hell out of me. I started second-guessing if I could actually afford to quit my job, I wondered if it was the responsible thing to do, and I worried that my husband might end up resenting me for not going into an actual job every day as he does. I had developed all of this doubt to the point where one day I would talk myself up and say “I am just going to do it.” Then the next day I would say “I can’t do this. What was I thinking?” I was driving my husband insane with my doubt and fear, and finally, he just told me to quit my job and focus on my writing. It was kind of a “now or never” type situation. It is odd to me that after spending years imagining, hoping, and fantasizing about this moment that suddenly I was pumping the breaks. I think it is one of those things that you never think is in the cards for you, and when you finally have an opportunity to make it happen it puts you in a state of shock. And then that state of shock turns into doubt, and then that doubt turns into fear. But after talking to my therapist and doing some major introspective work, I made the decision to quit my job to attempt to make my dream come true.

It was scary. It still is scary to this day. As it stands, I am two months into what could be a life-altering choice that I made. But with that being said, I don’t think that I have ever been happier about myself. So here is the thing. I am not oblivious or naive to the fact that there is a high probability that nothing will come from this. I know that I am asking for a lot from the universe to give me the success that I desire from my writing, but I just want it so bad. I live for my writing. I live for my audience. It brings me so much satisfaction whenever I push the “Publish now” button on my website. It warms my heart whenever someone messages me about a piece that I wrote. I am thriving. I feel alive. My spark is growing larger and larger with each day that passes. Yes, as per usual, the unknown is terrifying. I do not know where this is going to take me in my life. But do you know what sounds even more terrifying to me? Not knowing if my dream could have been a reality. Always pondering the idea if I made the right choice by not running towards my lifelong dream. I will never regret the choice I made to try to improve my life by chasing my dream, and I will continue to thrive on it until the moment I draw my final breath. 

Fear was one of the strongest internal opponents that I have ever had to face, but man does it feel amazing to conquer that monster.