Today I am used to my loneliness. I woke up, and was happy to do some work on my computer that had been waiting for me, and some updates to my webpage. I ate a bowl of noodles left over from last night. I am about to do grocery shopping, but felt an urge to write.
I’ve often been lonely in the last few weeks. I am tired of being the one that has to call my friends. Frustrated by how complicated it is to fit into friends’ schedules, and try to remember if they need to be booked far in advance, or only a few days, or not at all, and whether they need to be reminded in order to keep the date.
I am also somewhat confused that most of the people I feel close to are friends from a distance, both temporal and geographical, that I keep in touch with by e-mail, and like my friendships in this city, I am the one who does more work, puts more effort in.
I’ve also felt edgy, not the same sort of feeling as loneliness, but something that has exacerbated it. Unable to feel at ease and calm, instead of using my time alone to read all those unread books, watch the unwatched DVDs, fulfill a much-wanted regular routine of exercise or meditation or simply even feeding myself properly, I fret. I think of people to call. I check my e-mail obsessively. I end up surfing the internet. I waste my energy in sexual fantasies. I tidy things. I feel lonely.
But today, I woke with energy and joy. Not without effort, the next week is completely full with meeting up with friends. This weekend is not full, but has enough markers to point me in various directions, get me out of the house, and give structure to my days. Also, after some periods that have felt slow, my work looks like it will be taking off in a good way, some interesting tasks and trips in the near future. My writing has also accelerated, and the new book’s publication feels just around the corner. Three poems came out mid-week. It felt like a beautiful stranger opening his palms again and again: a jewel, a chocolate truffle, a candle.
So, while I’m alone today until the late afternoon, and my friends who said they’d call haven’t called and are not answering their phone, and my friends overseas are all busy in their own lives and work and sleep and that we inevitably drift apart from each other as we age in a range from an infintessimal amount to so far it is unuseful to measure, I feel somehow, today, used to my loneliness.