Blow Away

Does anybody else know this ache of loneliness? This feeling that resonates from my gut through my torso into a weight in my chest and my arms - is it isolated to just me or does somebody else feel this too?

It comes on like a sudden breeze. Or the bigger wave after a series of small ones, the one that gets the bottom of your pants wet, your pants that you were sure were rolled up high enough. It's not totally unexpected, the conditions are there, but it could have not happened without any note of it's absence.

I know I am not the only lonely one, and I know that I am not alone. I have opened up and left myself vulnerable, I haven't been sleeping and I've been thinking about not sleeping alone. Perhaps the ache slips in because I let my defenses down so my body has to remind my heart to button up again.

Perhaps, though, the ache is just a reminder that loneliness can be damned - it will always pass. May it be reminder that whatever sadness and solitude pass through my heart is dwarfed by the shadow of the grief I survive.

The breeze dies down, the wave rolls back. And just like that I breathe deeply and enjoy the quiet.