Situating the World
Alleviation of alone-ness.
Whatever the antithesis to loneliness is is what I'm wishing for tonight. I'm tired of feeling alone around others. I want people who can see right into me and who feel to me as if we're cut from the same cloth. Peers, in every sense. I'm tired of feeling different. I'm already a seasoned professional in feeling different. I'm fluent in it. It's one of my few consistent experiences.
I'm tired of difference and I'm tired of distance. Distance between self and others--not geographically. Wretched alone-ness. I just don't want to feel alone anymore, and I don't know if it's something I'm doing or whether it's my environment. I know how it feels to be close to others in a satisfactory way, but it happens so rarely. I feel like I get to let my guard down so rarely, to enjoy true human companionship, and then I have to put my shield back on and keep trudging forward until the next rare opportunity. It's not until I have it that I realize how long it's been and how rare it is.
I've always felt different, with a few blissful exceptions. I never knew how good it could feel to just be part of the crowd and not consciously aware of how different I feel from others. I just want to blend in, sometimes. Be ordinary and plain and average and blissfully unaware of such things as feeling like I'm on the outside looking in all the time.
When I was a kid, I'd tell my mom that I felt like I was outside of a cabin in the winter, and it was snowing. Looking through the window I could see people inside, by a roaring fire, talking and laughing. I always wanted to get inside that house but never knew how.
That hasn't changed, because my development was interrupted by bipolar so I never got the chance to figure all that sh*t out. I live an aborted life. I am already "long in the tooth" without ever having known what it's like not to feel old. Everybody else got to be 20, and 22, and 26, but I never did. With every additional sense of "normalcy" I get, I realize how far away I'd been; the reality sinks in that I couldn't bear at the time because it was too much. I'm reclaiming even more bits and pieces of my self these days, and it feels good. I didn't realize there was any more to get back, but there is. It's a relief to begin to feel like myself again. It feels surprising, because it's been so long.
You have to keep on keeping on, even when there isn't any left.
Whatever the antithesis to loneliness is is what I'm wishing for tonight. I'm tired of feeling alone around others. I want people who can see right into me and who feel to me as if we're cut from the same cloth. Peers, in every sense. I'm tired of feeling different. I'm already a seasoned professional in feeling different. I'm fluent in it. It's one of my few consistent experiences.
I'm tired of difference and I'm tired of distance. Distance between self and others--not geographically. Wretched alone-ness. I just don't want to feel alone anymore, and I don't know if it's something I'm doing or whether it's my environment. I know how it feels to be close to others in a satisfactory way, but it happens so rarely. I feel like I get to let my guard down so rarely, to enjoy true human companionship, and then I have to put my shield back on and keep trudging forward until the next rare opportunity. It's not until I have it that I realize how long it's been and how rare it is.
I've always felt different, with a few blissful exceptions. I never knew how good it could feel to just be part of the crowd and not consciously aware of how different I feel from others. I just want to blend in, sometimes. Be ordinary and plain and average and blissfully unaware of such things as feeling like I'm on the outside looking in all the time.
When I was a kid, I'd tell my mom that I felt like I was outside of a cabin in the winter, and it was snowing. Looking through the window I could see people inside, by a roaring fire, talking and laughing. I always wanted to get inside that house but never knew how.
That hasn't changed, because my development was interrupted by bipolar so I never got the chance to figure all that sh*t out. I live an aborted life. I am already "long in the tooth" without ever having known what it's like not to feel old. Everybody else got to be 20, and 22, and 26, but I never did. With every additional sense of "normalcy" I get, I realize how far away I'd been; the reality sinks in that I couldn't bear at the time because it was too much. I'm reclaiming even more bits and pieces of my self these days, and it feels good. I didn't realize there was any more to get back, but there is. It's a relief to begin to feel like myself again. It feels surprising, because it's been so long.
You have to keep on keeping on, even when there isn't any left.
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