The Quiet Footsteps of Loneliness

I have been thinking about loneliness. It is almost a mythical thing unless someone tells you that they are experiencing loneliness. It's not really a condition but it's sad. At the same time it's subtle and delicate, it creeps and doesn't make a lot of noise.

I feel the physical way the brain deals with loneliness is kind in a way. The way sometimes you pass out if you are in too much pain or fall asleep from crying so much.

If you are feeling and experiencing loneliness you start to forget what real friendships felt like, the thought and feeling of them dulls, until you can't remember them too much - the immediacy of it is taken away, extracted, slowly seeped out . You're happy with watching TV at night, maybe you have a hobby like collecting trains or reading. All of these physical things become friends. A good tv show is a nice chat. A book can feel like a warm embrace. Trains whizzing around may fill you with the excitement of a kiss. Holidays and weekends aren't long enough for you to dwell on the loneliness too much. Work is so much of a drain that the evening seeps luxury not emptiness.

It is only sometimes, in an extra quiet moment, you truly engage with the loneliness itself. When distractions are taken away, when you have to touch the centre of the ache. I think a lot of people are lonely. If I am walking home from work at night I glance in windows and the erratic light of the television is flickering on people's faces, just about every single house this is happening. I say this with a detachment but if they walked past my window they would probably see the glare of it on mine.

I have made a really good friend recently and I only realised how lonely I was only after this friendship was conceived. I wasn't desperately lonely but that's because I feel my brain numbed to the desolate nature of my life, the loneliness just became a gentle thud.

Quiet Friendships

Quiet friendships. What I love about these friendships is the way they glow. They are without words, without the same formalities as other friendships, just a silent feeling. It is similar to the feeling one gets when they hold a hamster or a small creature; the intensity of it; how delicate and small but overwhelmingly precious.

It began when I was working Wednesday and Thursday nights. After I had finished I walked under the black sky to the bustop to go home. My bus took a little time to come and before it did, another bus arrived and five people got off and waited with me for the bus. Four were male and one was female.

Every week this happened. The same five people. I wondered where they were going to or coming from at this hour and it must be something rather specific since every week we all caught the bus at the same time. Like lions roaming the pavement, probably just like myself: Restless in the cold, sharp air. Looking at their watches and the sky. Staring at their shoes and gazing at the bright river of cars.

When the bus finally arrived they tended to rush on before me, even though I arrived first (I didn't mind, though). But the one girl always made a point to let me on first. She would take a step back and gesture to me to get on the bus, making the other people wait until I had, if she managed to get to the front first. She would smile and then I.

For the next few weeks, this would happen often. She would always let me get on before her and I thankyoud her with a smile. She had brown curly hair and looked exempt from any sort of fashion which made her even more alluring and mysterious. She wore a backpack, blue jeans, a black jumper and Dr. Martin's shoes.

I would get off the bus before everyone else which left me always wondering where they were going to or coming from. On the bus everyone would stare into the middle distance, lost in thought possibly, or staring out of the window into the night. I have never heard her voice or any one of the other's, but this friendship remains precious to me all the same.

New Friend

I have made a new friend called Alfie. He strides upto me with an eagerness when I am leaving the house and lays on his back for me to tickle him and then when I return to the house he follows me upto my door and insists on coming inside and staying for tea (he eats Polly's biscuits). To get him to leave I have to give him more biscuits but he is very friendly nonetheless.