Sunday

Sunday. I am alone. It's a horrible reality these days. I used to be swamped with people, overwhelmed with all these strangers, all wanting something from me, and going away once they'd gotten it. I decided to stop giving, see who was left around after that. Few. Precious few. And all of us, every last one of us gloriously busy with some important thing or another.  Little by little, life has whittled me down to this. Perhaps as punishment because I don't want to be as a tree people only visit to strip of its fruit. Perhaps I've outlived my usefulness and that is the only reason I was born. To give all that I have. The aloneness is the very last thing I have left that is fully mine. Sometimes, I try to ignore it so it's not mine either. Like I want to be left with nothing. I send the aloneness away when I go to work or visit with somebody, but it always creeps back. I bundle it up, and throw it off, high high into the stars, or past the mountains , or far below the waters, tied to the heaviest rock I can find, and always, it finds its way back to me. Sometimes, it is all that I can call my own, and I cling to it like it's oxygen. Other times, I run like hell from it, and don't care if I can breathe or not. And it is the times in between, when I can't decide whether I want the aloneness or not, when I'm confused, or perhaps indecisive, and I don't even have knowledge of what I prefer- it's those in between times when the aloneness is strongest, most present. When I cannot even define what I want. If I don't know what I want, am I still alive? My heart beats, and I eat and sleep and work- but without meaning, or desire, am I still here, or have I left myself and gone someplace else that I'm unaware of?  What is there to come back to if I am gone? What is there but quiet, and time, and the holes, and cracks, and emptiness from things that occupied my yesterdays that I've been unable to fill today? Will I bring back something to give meaning and fullness to tomorrow from that nameless place I must go to, that place nobody knows, not even me? Inbetween cups of coffee, I write this, not knowing if anybody sees, or what will happen if the do see? Does anybody else on earth ever feel this way? Does it matter?