“If I’m going to feel lonely anyway, I’d rather
be alone,” she thought.
And that’s what she’d tell herself every time
anyone came close to her. She’d rather be alone than open up and face the
possibility of being misunderstood. She knew she wouldn’t stand having her
feelings out in the open while everyone judged them to be excessive, an
overreaction, a call for attention, an intimate selfishness buried underneath
layers and layers of care for others.
“I’d rather be alone than surrounded by people
who can’t understand what it’s like to be me. The pain it bears. The solitude,
the sorrow, the fears and abandonment, the feeling that I’ve been alone all
along and that that’s what awaits me for the rest of my existence.”
Choosing to be alone always came with a price.
If she had been feeling lonely before, now she also had that burden of
loneliness on her shoulders, as she could’ve remedied it but had preferred not
to. “I’m lonely, alone and it’s all my fault,” she’d cry in her bed after her
desperate attempts at putting herself together had miserably failed. In moments
like that, she couldn’t stop herself from glancing at her phone, looking
forward to any message from anyone with equal parts of hope and dread. “Please,
someone notice I’m lonely,” she thought. “Please, no one ever know how I feel.
I’d have to explain, and right now I just can’t,” she thought.
Whenever she finally checked it out, only an
empty screen would be witness to her solitary tears.
And so, another day would go.
