Unseen

[Tralla]

If you know and care, *don't panic!* This is a bit like steam escaping a tightly lidded pot... I'm okay, and there are periods of happiness to balance off this dreary bit. I feel a bit like a melancholic young adolescent even posting it, but it's my first bit of creativity in a long while, so I couldn't resist.

 

~ ~ ~

 

I never thought of loneliness. Of all the things to come, I didn’t plan for that. No one warned me, either. Do they not experience the same, or are they so acclimated to it that they no longer consider it a factor? I would have liked to know, even though I probably still wouldn’t have planned for it. I should have.

 

You don’t notice it at first. It sneaks up on you slowly, ever so slowly, as each of your previous links to the world is severed or slips away. For the first little while, you think yourself immune. You are wrong, as you will learn. “The path from cocky ignorance”, I think Mark called it. You learn.

 

As I said, it’s a slow thing. The phone stops ringing, to begin with, even if you attempt to coax out the sound by calling someone first. Phones are uncooperative little creatures. But it’s all right. Write off the phone book. There’s always the messenger. You are loved.

 

Eventually online acquaintances grow stale. The incomings dwindle as you grow tired and busy and bitter about the telephone, which is still not cooperating (little bastard.) You’re not inclined to initiate. It’s all right. Write off the messenger. Family’s all you really need. You will always be loved.

 

But the hours are long and the meals are sporadic. You’re not learning ABC’s anymore, so no one really knows or pretends to understand. You’re a big girl. You can laugh off the strange looks and bad jokes people reach for to ward off what you love. You can eat alone, and you can sleep alone, and you can travel alone, and you can study alone. You understand your choice of passions, or pretend to, which amounts to the same thing since you can’t see your own strange looks. You don’t love.

 

You carry your solitude on your shoulders like a heavy, heavy cloak. You smile your polite fake little smiles, and dress to the mean, and carry a novel, and imitate ambition. You walk with your eyes a million miles away because to look down means that you’re not strong enough to fight that little unplanned thing slowly devouring the moth-bitten remnants of your world. You don’t know how to relate to people anymore; the smile’s a little too rusty, the phone a little too dusty. You’ve fallen too far behind. You feel like a child. You need to be loved.

 

You tell yourself that it must be worth it. So many do something so similar, and you’ve learned it well that you’re nothing special. You’re going places. You can start anew when you get wherever it is that you’re supposed to be going. If you get there. When you get there. If. You’re going to be successful, and charming, and pretty, and social, and loved.

 

‘Going to be’ doesn’t hold up so well, these days. These days you’re tired, the kind of tired that sleeping doesn’t touch. The polite fake little smiles are an awful lot of effort, now. You would weep, but that sneaky little thing has consumed just about everything, now. You’re feeling kind of empty inside, and eating doesn’t really help much. You’re feeling kind of dehydrated, and drinking – water – doesn’t really help much, either.

 

And when you finally see all the little things you never planned for, you’re sad and exhausted. Come so far, so far to go. Will you ever get there? Will anyone be left to see? What else will you bypass or lose or give up without even knowing? You don’t know. Path from cocky ignorance, indeed.

 

But at least you’re stronger now. You don’t need to be loved. You’re a big girl. You’re a little better at planning, or like to pretend that you are. You’re not so special, but you’re stronger now. You’re going places, and you just might get there soon.

 

Will anyone see?

 

Will anyone remember me?

 

Oh.

 

Perhaps I’m not as dehydrated as I thought.

[WrenWind]

*smiles and then hugs* I have felt this way. Well done.

[Wyvern]

Certainly a depressing piece, I can sympathize with the loneliness expressed here as well. What really gets to me about it, though, is that the tiny glimmer of hope that the second person of the piece expresses at the end is just taking her back to where she started from. :-( I guess it isn't only "the first little while" that one can fool themselves into thinking that they don't need to be loved. It's also interesting how the ambitions of popularity and success in this are equated to the feeling of being loved, since many popular celebrities are very lonely people at heart.

 

Anyway, just know that the Pen is always here as a place to receive love and respect from. :-) There are plenty of people here who will always care about you and your endeavors, and creativity will never be a requirement for checking in with us and just letting us know how you're doing. I realize it probably sounds general written down here directly, but we do care. ;-)

[Sweetcherrie]

I see you

 

Than to the writing...nice, emotions well conveyed, and in a rather short piece you manage to grab the attention of the reader and hold it till the end

 

Thank you for sharing this *wishes your creativity all the best and smuggles it some sugar*

[Mirrizin]

Sounds familiar, kind of what I've been through off and on a bit lately, with some variations. Thanks:)