Alone; Lonely

It is early evening and here I am, typing this at my desk back at the officetel. The neighbourhood is quiet, and so is the room where I sit, the silence broken only by the hum of the air conditioner and the music playing from my phone.

 

I relish the silence.

 

I relish the solitude.

 

But as much as I relish the silence and the solitude, it is only because I know I am not alone- and that there is someone whom I value- soon to appear at the door where we will then greet each other before heading out for dinner.

 

Being alone, and being lonely, I now realize, are two very different things.

 

I used to not understand. 

But now I do.

 

Being alone means that you've got some time where you're by yourself, and you're doing your own stuff however you want to do them, but in the very near future, there is someone waiting for you. It means that there is someone  whom you anticipate to meet- be it a loved one, a parent, a child, a friend, a relative- someone.

You can be walking on the street by yourself, you can be watching a movie or having a meal by yourself, but you know that there is someone whom you're going back to, there is someone you're talking to, there is someone whom you're going to meet- and that person is waiting for you.

That's being alone.

Being lonely, however, or Loneliness, as we call it with a capital L, is totally different. It is where you are being alone- eating, walking, shopping, running errands- but in the course of the day, or in the course of the evening, there is not only no one right by you, but there is also no one waiting happily to meet you. 

Not in the near future, not in the future of the future.  

In those few days where I was by myself, it was Loneliness with a capital L.  
I didn't realize how much the little things mattered until the day my usual companion and co-worker had to leave suddenly, and there I was, loaded with a bunch of problems that I usually didn't have to solve, as well as  issues that were of mine own.

What made it worse was not just the fact that I had to do everything alone (and not really knowing what I was doing), but the realization that today I was walking this path alone with no one up there waiting for me. I had walked this path alone many times before, but this day there was no one I was meeting, no one was waiting for me and no one would be there smiling at the sight of my arrival.

Today was the day that I'd come here alone, and I'd have to go back alone.

In the hot afternoon as I walked down that path, I realized just how many things I'd taken for granted; that there were so many moments I'd assumed would always be there. Never once during those times when I insisted I needed time on my own did it occur to me that I'd one day feel the emptiness so heavily, or that the understanding of real loneliness would dawn so strongly upon me.

But today I understood.

I grasped it all too well.

For it was no ordinary day, it was no day where things were as per normal.

No, it was not. I was all by myself. I was all alone, I felt lonely.

And I didn't like it one bit at all.