I feel alone again.

I don’t know why this feeling grips me sometimes, unexpectedly leaping out at me from empty beds, tables for two with a single chair, solo bench presses, and duets on the radio.

I don’t understand why the people I’m with don’t comfort me, I don’t understand why I imagine isolation. They surround me and hug me and hold my hand, but I still cannot relate – I don’t feel a unity. Their hand in mine is intangible to my mind, an empty promise and unfulfilled expectation.

A depression grips my heart. This is the kind of sadness that comes with disappointment, in knowing that the potential for something brilliant came speeding towards you, slowed down slightly, and then waved as it went on by. My heart was reaching out, hopeful beyond hope despite it all, only to be let down. It gets harder and harder to take a risk – harder and harder to believe in opportunity.

I feel alone again.

I can poor out my thoughts, my worries, my dreams into someone’s hands and feel empty still. I still feel misunderstood and uncared for, alone and isolated. It seems to me a kind of arrogance – how dare I feel alone? How dare I feel a crushing weight or sadness when on paper, outside my mind, my life is a dream? How dare I be ungrateful for what I am?

I struggle to even mention my loneliness. It only finds body in words when spilled into a glass of whiskey and tears. My pain only finds light in ***** soaked voices and in barely literate post-party writings.

I ignore the pain when I am sober. Only then does logic prevail – only then does mind tell my heart to cease its petulant pleads for attention. Only in sobriety does the loneliness find itself shut into a box, a chest, and locked away deep inside. Only in sobriety can I hold it in.

And so, naturally, I do not drink. I don’t like that whiskey gives voice to my thoughts of despair. I don’t like the fact that people can finally see how I feel – I don’t want them to know. Nobody needs to bear the weight of my horror, my sadness, and my doubt. Nobody else needs to hold what is my responsibility and mine alone.

I charge through life, a façade of happiness, never removing my mask. I set myself for the highest aims and the greatest goals that I might forget the pettiness of my heart. I surround myself with those that adore me, friends that would give of themselves for my good. Nobody will suspect me. If, in one of the whiskey nights and champagne mornings, a hint of my mental state should drop, they will look at me. They will wonder how a person with a life such as mine, friends such as mine, a future such as mine could possibly feel alone. Hopefully they will disregard their suspicions and assign guilt to the bottle.

Hopefully they will see me happy and full of life and love.

Hopefully they will witness my charade,

And forego the questioning.