Why My Loneliness Empowers And Cripples Me At The Same Time
On some days, my loneliness is a warrior in a corset, tied to a rope, being pulled to the ground, with an ever increasing force.
On others, it’s the parachute, that swells and sweeps through a sky full of possibilities, with an unstable and delusional landing.
I’m the expected background painting of
first dates over brewing coffee
and exchanged glances.
Everyone stops by and says hello,
but no one stays.
I’m the last resort for a date and
the first for let’s-make-out under a tree,
but neither gift-wraps companionship.
I live in alternate realities, experiencing the grief of a mother who lost her famous young daughter to suicide, to the happiness of my sister’s friend’s unanticipated good grades.
My intensity is too much,
patchwork of intertwined thoughts,
contradicting clockwork,
and all things
no one talks about.
And for how long,
can someone swim in the ocean?
Oceans are only good for weekends
and once-a-year holidays.
My worldly interactions are storms, and
my alone time- the lingering silence.
Either I’m too involved in a context,
squeezing out every bit
and feeding it to the malnourished,
or I take 10 days off
feeling the exact same way,
feeling stuck with my shadow.
I crave the darkness,
as much as the light,
and it’s difficult to stand at
the threshold of one,
and let go of another.
My loneliness can be the life of the party
one evening,
carefully putting
all things good and desirable on display,
and a living corpse on another,
unable to process everything
I worked so hard to become.
Why won’t anyone understand, that
I sleep off to my own demons,
receiving wake-up calls
from my own angels?
I bleed, and I heal, on my own.
I no longer feel dependent on
someone’s timely reply to my text,
or the hug I had been expecting,
or even on the highs of success,
and the friendships with terms and conditions.
I’m the calm ocean,
a witness to faraway galaxies,
evidence of eternity.
I’m the transient bubble,
loathing it’s own existence.
I’m the gentle lullaby caressing your forehead,
and the deafening city cacophony,
waking you up from mid-noon slumber.
I’m the saviour,
and I need the saving.
My loneliness, is a choice.
At times, it’s a compulsion.
My loneliness is the breeding ground for
star-studded dreams,
and for sudden deaths.
It wants to be
the change for the hopeless,
yet it nibbles at it’s own skin,
sketching destruction,
at every crack it can find.
My loneliness is a mother who never gives up on her child,
despite failure, crippling anxiety, and hopelessness.
It’s the sole to my spine,
and the cocoon to my cranium.
It’s the spotlight,
and the margin notes.
My loneliness, is the pain I want to get rid of.
My loneliness, is the pain I chose. 
