Streams of Comfort

This week I started a short story. I suppose the topic of loneliness inspired me to write more than I usually do. Or perhaps a poem did could not encompass the depth of my feelings this time. Loneliness is everywhere. Sometimes even when I look in the mirror. It’s distant memory now, but the loneliness point of my life was my first year of college. I felt so isolated. As though I had been ripped away from my family and friends. In a way, I had. But similar to the character in this story, it was a self-imposed isolation that led to my feelings of loneliness. It was only through prayer that God was able to show me that He is always there. Even if we are abandoned by everyone or we abandon them. I hope this month you can examine the situations that make you feel lonely. Remember that God is always with us.

Part 1:

On the bank of a distant shore, I can hear my name in the echoes of seashells still. The place I thought I would be happiest. Where I once stood alone with more grains of sand than thoughts. Escape was on the precipice of my mind everyday of my mortal life. But for a thousand years, I never left. 

The island was my home. I convinced myself I was as happy as the clams I seemed to have an endless supply of. Who needed other creatures when they would only cause problems? They brought with them hunger and not just for food. Hunger for my most inner thoughts and secrets. The darkness I toiled away in my anger. The deep resentments I did not want to let go of. Then they would be hungry for my own hunger. That I would want to know all those things about them. A vicious cycle, truly. I thought it would be a nice change of pace to be alone for a while. All excuses for my temporary insanity. Or maybe my permanent one. I told myself I would only need a few days to shrug off my ennui. 

The first century was the easiest. I can’t seem to remember much of my life in the “before isolation” time. However, it was all fresh in my memories back then. My family on the west coast of some country or other. The white fence and oddly shaped mailbox. The strange dreams of being an acrobat in a circus. Flying away from all my problems. Which, in retrospect, are nothing but a blip in eternity anyway. I suppose as I grew, my apathy grew too. It felt as though my existence was simply to watch the most boring movie unfold. Everyone had problems and talked about them, loudly. In case the person right next to you couldn’t catch what you were saying. In the moment, it felt fine, but having friends, in those days, made me wish for deafness. 

And so, I left. If you think it wasn’t easy, you’d be wrong. It was entirely too easy to leave everything behind. Why do you think some people disappear without a trace? They may regret it eventually, as I did, but by then it’s too late. The cord has been severed. There’s nothing left to tie you to anything. No rope to find your way home. 

Centuries two and three were quiet. I stopped talking to myself. Or maybe I lost the ability. The palm trees and water were not good conversationalists, if you can believe it. I accepted that this was what I wanted. To be alone. Losing my speech was a small price to pay. 

Another two hundred years passed and a bottle swept onto my shore. Curiosity no longer existed for me without any other warm body to feed it. It stayed buried in the sand for another hundred years. No one ever tells you how lonely being alone can be. People talk about feeling alone in a crowded room. Yet, the soft loneliness of not hearing another person’s breath is a slow kind of torment. One that sneaks up on you. In my anguished haze, I remembered a moment. I wrote it down on the sand. Writing seemed to be the only vehicle for my sanity in those days.  

I remembered having a crush. 

Though love is now a foreign concept. People think being alone will fix the issue of self-worth. It doesn’t. In fact, the vicious thoughts in my head about myself only seemed to get louder with every passing sunrise. 

Before the island, there was a boy named George. If I’m remembering his name correctly. It could have been Ken or Joseph. A boy, nonetheless, that captured my heart with his nasal voice and acid-washed T-shirts. Everyone thought he was the “one”. And for some reason, I joined everyone. Not long after my first crush, came my first heartbreak. Or so I thought. He was a Christian boy who invited me to his church every week. He invited every living creature too. That was the excuse I came up with for not going. Plus, I already explained my aversion to other’s hunger. I thought it would be worse in a church setting. They would want to know my sins. My struggles. To hang me on the cross too. It was too much for my small mind to comprehend at the time. 

Yet the crush lingered, so one day I told him yes. The day of my heartbreak. It rained that day. He smiled all the way on our walk to church. Just him and me, and 30 other kids. That day I felt fragile. At any moment, one false word or action could shatter me. I wouldn’t have the ability to put myself back together. I went through the motions: the singing, the praying. I felt nothing when the pastor asked if we could stand to receive God’s salvation. All we had to do was confess we needed Him. On some level, I knew his words rang true. But it was overshadowed by the emptiness and fear that I made a horrible mistake. When the boy asked if I would be coming next week, I shattered. Yelling such poisonous words at him for bringing me to this crowded place of what I thought were hypocrites. I could not seem to stop myself until I broke him. And that broke me. 

I struggled to hold back tears as I finished writing on the sand. The first emotion I felt in a few hundred years. It seemed to shake me from my slumber. The kind of sleep that souls can go into when they want to numb their pain. Awake, I opened the bottle.