Substitution

I've felt a lot of lonliness this semester, maybe this college career. It has resulted (predictably) in reflection on lonliness.


I love how angsty this gets.

There is this paradox. People have spoken of feeling alone when they are surrounded by people, at a party or workplace por ejemplo. And this experience is certainly not foreign to me. I think that feeling can be named 'alone'. What I've been experiencing is almost the exact opposite. When I'm completely alone, when walk up the stairs, returning to a cold room with not even the traces of company, it's in those moments that I become aware of this closeness to someone. When no one is around, that is when I believe, when it's true, when I feel more tangibly than anything the presence of someone I love. My imagination plays a role, of course. That's probably why this person is most often a woman. Which sheds light on another interesting side: waiting. Because after I've settled in my room and it's clear no one is actually here, I usually engage in this sort of active waiting, or preparation. I do work, mostly. But it is always this attitude that this whoever could come walking in at any moment. And there's two layers to it: the first is the obviously longterm one, that this presence I feel or expect to feel is just the deepseated desire for one other human being that, in the word's of a friend, I would "do passionately and often". And no mom, that most certainly would not be the extent of the relationship (but if I have anything to say about it, it'd be a factor for darn certain). The second kind of waiting is that although I'd be far from bored or disengaged, when that person arrived, you could bet cash money just about everything except for them would be the farthest thing from my mind. That's the second kind of waiting.



Of course, there is no physical presence. I mean that's the whole point of this message.

In place of sharing kisses and conversation with my lover, I heave a sigh to my God. And it feels good.