The Unsaid Screams of Moments Lost to Loneliness: To The Lone Souls

Published: June 25, 2019

Revised:

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I believe this world contains a sixth sense. One where some how, some way, we know that deep down inside of us we are connected by common thoughts, ideas, or emotions. Themes that run through all of our minds and bind the human race together on a deeper level. Within each of us, there is an uncanny ability to almost read the minds of those close to us, or even ones miles away.

Part of me wants to believe that's why we can sense what others are thinking, or what they wish they could say, in an instant packed full of emotion. Moments like a fight between father and son witnessed by friends; best friends turned enemies due to misunderstood rumors heard by strangers at the next table; a couple separated by blurred lines and lost love seen by all that follow their epic love story on social media.

We are connect by these moments. These scenes that play out before us, intertwining the lives of strangers, friends, family, lovers.... we know what those around us are thinking by just a simple look, touch, or synced heart beat.

We know because we feel it too.

But what about the moments that aren't so public? The dead of night thoughts, which only stir awake the restless one who thinks them, leaving the all-consuming loom of loneliness to take its grasp even harder on this sole soul.

Last night, I lay awake listening to the tick-tok of another sleepless night crawl away. Suddenly, I was jolted awake as I recalled a late night scramble of words which kept me company earlier this year. That night, I was consumed by loneliness. I was under the understanding that the weight of the world rested on my fragile shoulders, and that night's cool kiss of undesired stillness was all that I had to call my own.

In the days leading up to this mad dash of typing, I had been kicked as low as humanly possible, then stepped on one more time just for good measure. As my numb hands flipped up the computer screen, and my tired eyes flashed back and forth across the document, my midnight mind wrote:

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"I wake up with an immense fear to face the day ahead. I’m terrified of what they’ll find out, and say if they already know. I can’t keep going like this. Something has to give, I need to make a change.

I’m drained. I don’t care. Please let me sleep and give my achy heart a rest. I’m alone but no one knows it. I’m alone and no one cares. And those that would care can’t ever know, because I can’t burden them with this. I need to get over it.

'Get over it.'

But my skin is stained with the words they said.

In blood.

In tears.

In hatred for myself.

I jokingly said today I hate everyone and I just want to die. I screamed it in the car after school when I realized it wasn’t a joke.

I don’t want to feel empty any more. I no longer want to be sad. I want to go back to when happiness meant smiles, not faking a half laugh. Back when only stories called people names, not the faces I pass in the halls. Back to when I was me, and you were you, and neither of us were jumbled in this heap of a mess we call life."

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On the night my mind threw these words at the keyboard, I was scared. The day following, I was terrified to even look in the mirror. Not because I didn't like what I wrote, but because I believed it.

Soon, I shared these word. with those who I believed were close enough to understand this pain; people who could use their sixth sense to understand what I felt.

But I was wrong. These emotions were too strong for their hearts to take on, and my song of souls bewildered them.

They said it was awful, a terrible stretch of lines, words that shouldn't be read aloud.

Though at the time I simply nodded, shut the computer, and blocked those lines out of my thoughts, I now have a rebuttal.

These lines aren't unheard of, they aren't new, and they aren't alone. What I felt, who I was that night, and who I unwillingly return to each time my fingers press the space bar isn't just me. Those lonely thoughts aren't lonely in slightest, because there are others out there who feel the same way.

I ask you not to take pity, but instead I challenge you to listen. To find within yourself what you wish to scream to the world, and scream it. Scream it driving down highway with the windows rolled down, scream it on paper, scream it at a computer, or at the person who most needs to hear it. Because, though not everyone can hear what you truly feel, those who need to will hear your cry, and return it with soulful harmony.