Loneliness and Being Alone

As a young girl, I share a room with my sister.  I was 15 months younger and relied heavily upon her for my feelings of security and comfort.  It was such a dependency that if she woke in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, I would wake and cry until she returned.

Once I hit college, I began to appreciate time alone.  It wasn’t that I wanted to be alone all the time, it was simply that I began to recognise the simplicity in solitude.

A friend recently commented to me that she thinks there is some correlation with my father’s death, my pregnancy with Bubba Joe and my depression.  My response to her was duh!  (with a bit of eye rolling)

But that got me thinking.

I miss my dad horribly.  I have talked about that.  But what I think fail to realize is that my dad is dead.  Dead and gone.  Long gone and buried.

Now that might sound harsh or cruel, but it’s the truth.

I watched him die.  I held his hand.  I listened to his heart fail (I often listened to my dad’s heart, especially after he had open-heart).  I know in my head that my father is gone.

But in my heart …

and then I got pregnant with Bubba Joe.

While my family as I knew it was falling apart, my family was growing.

I still don’t know how to process it all.  And sometimes, I think it’s okay to not process, but to just keep going.

And when you are pregnant, and then that pregnancy gets complicated quickly, forcing real life and death decisions, there is no time to process in the here and now.  Just like that Sunday evening when I realized it was the last time I would see my dad alive.  There was no time to process what it all meant, or how tomorrow would feel like.  I could only get the doctors and nurses and send BJD to pick up my mom and call my brother to tell him to stop fighting with his wife and get here because dad was dying.

And then my beautiful little boy was born … six weeks early.

My world crashed.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but that was the beginning of the crash.

Since then, we moved over the great big blue … no, I say we moved but the truth is we ran away.  I ran away from everything in hopes I could leave it all behind.

But it is now catching up with me.

And I feel so damned alone.

Alone not in that good solitude kind of way.  I just feel lonely in that empty, nothing is fulfilling in my life kind of way.

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely adore my family.  Bubba Joe is one of the coolest kids I have ever met.  He’s strong and sensitive, caring and bold, and incredibly creative.  Giant Baby (who just turned 1 btw) is strong-willed and sensitive, observant and curious and intrigued by everything.

And BJD – well, he is the man I have always wanted.  He makes everything in my life worthwhile.

So why is it that I feel so damned lonely?

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