Live Alone. Die Alone.

You feel a certain amount of loneliness for long enough and you just become confortable with it. You make yourself at home in it. It's a coping mechanism like anything else.

People misunderstand what loneliness is all about. It's not about solitude or not having someone to share something with. That's not where the pain comes from. It comes from a lacking. A failure. A deficit that's the result of what you want or expect at a certain time, and what is actually there. And after a while, if you're lonely long enough, the expectation no longer exists but the desire remains. It's the last thing to go. Were you to ever truly lose that then you'd truly be happy being alone. There would be no loneliness. But there is always a need. There is always a deep-seated desire. But you keep that at bay for the most part and instead manage your expectations.

That's where the reclusiveness comes in. That's how the grinch comes to be. And in all the things you see that can be fun, joyous or satisfying, and in all the ways that those things involve other people, other beings, other souls...you, instead, see sadness, hurt and despair. You no longer trust things to be what they are. You know the ugly truth and you reject it. Because instead of wanting to be happy, instead of wanting a life filled with joy, you want to avoid the the hurt, the sadness and the despair. It's too much to bear. And if a life without rejection, without deficit, costs you moments upon moments of fleeting joys and happiness, that's just fine. Because with no expectation comes no disappointment.

And what do you do for a life? How do you choose a life without joy? There's no malevolence in your grinchy attitude. Your expectation is now only quiet and solitude. Because that abides. That persists. That can come upon request.

The "grinch" comes when a life worth living tries to intrude on your life made tolerable. He grumps and growls when the world reminds you that somewhere deep inside you beats a heart that might not yet be satisfied with a life without love. Somehow, someway, inevitably, a blade of hope grows through the cracks of your concrete emotional solitude. And it grows with an eager yearning for light and love and nurturing. This single blade pierces through months, years, possibly a lifetime's thick of resolve and resignation. This little blade screams for more. It yearns for life. It threatens to shatter everything you've worked so hard to create and to avoid.

So you beat it. You crush it. You drive it back into temporary oblivion. And you let out a sigh of relief.
The earth no longer quakes.
The moon stays in orbit.
The sun remains safe, very far and very away.
You are alone again and that is as you expected.

Life becomes barren and loveless and the BEST part is that the greatest promise that day brings is the promise of nothing. Nothing more than whatever a sunrise and a fresh cup of coffee gives you every morning.

Safety. Solitude. Satisfaction.

Safety is an illusion. This life offers no guarantees.
Satisfaction is a function of the mind and of the heart.
Solitude is the only thing that is real. It's the only true constant.

You're born alone. You die alone.

I will model my life after this persistent reality.