There is a special kind of alone that comes at night when things are quiet.
Beneath the drone of the tv,
Behind the beat of your music,
Beyond the pool of light in your kitchen
And just outside the glass of your windowpane.
It is the most insidious feeling I have ever experienced.
It is a silence that requires no cessation of noise.
It is a darkness that needs no lack of light.
It is an isolation that needs no absence of connection.
It is simply the time,
The force, almost tangible,
Of the night when you are utterly solitary no matter how hard you try to fight it off.
It is the feeling from which the loneliness so often felt by people who live alone springs.
For the only protection from such a feeling is the embrace of another person.
It is a primal thing, this hackle raising time of the night,
When all the clamor of human existence seems to stop,
To get far away as if behind thick glass.
It is born in us to fear it. I'm not sure why.
But it needs no help to be what it is.

So turn on your television. Crank up your favorite song. Blaze the lights. Shut the curtains.
But when you curl up on your couch with your legs tucked beneath you and try to relax, you will still feel hunted.
Which, to me, begs the question:
What used to hunt us?
What put in us the fear of that feeling?
What used to cut us off and find us alone in the dark?
Because instincts aren't in you for no reason.
We are the product of thousands of years of evolutionary success.
Someone tell me why that feeling persisted, if it's useless?