What If There’s No Loneliness?

Re-imagining the fear of alone-ness.

Photo by author.

Oh, have I been lonely.

I have felt the weight of being separated from the pack. I have carried that alone-ness brick in my chest; walked the streets round-shouldered, passing neighborhood cats on their stoops and been too hollowed out to invite them down for a cuddle.

In my 40s, still single and living alone, I had moments of fearing my solo-ness, as if my chronic singularity wasn’t enough to withstand the storms of life (unemployment, illness, starting and ending relationships, new business ventures). When I got curious enough to examine the fear visitations, I saw this image of the worst-that-could-happen:

Me, alone, under a bridge, with nothing but a shopping cart.

But recently I saw something new in this image of loneliness, on the 362nd day of a work-at-home pandemic, while staring at a pair of fir trees: In the long green arms of the trees I saw no loneliness, no aloneness. I received the information almost as if the tree put it into my body.

What if there is no loneliness —

——other than what’s created in our imaginations?

There is no aloneness with the shopping cart, the grimy chrome weathered by thousands…