Existential Loneliness

There have been times, sleeping in the same bed as a companion, when I would be kept awake by my troubled thoughts.  By thoughts of being unloved, by thoughts of not being good enough, and by thoughts of having being left behind, and of losing what I once had.  And during some of those times, these thoughts lasted so long, were so painful, that I left the room, and lay down in the hallway, on the floor, feeling alone.

During one of those times, I did not leave to go to the hallway, but instead quietly lay down on the floor in the same room.  I remember putting in my earbuds, and listening to songs by Leigh Nash, the vocalist I am a fan of.  It was, 4AM, perhaps -- who knows, really -- and a song came up that I had not listened to in quite some time.  The name of the song is "Nervous in the Light of Dawn".  The lyrics start like this:

Dreamed I was in the desert
Without any love
Storm gray clouds
Hovering above

Silence all around me I was wandering alone
And I realized there is nothing anyone can really own

And I wished for guidance
And I wished for peace
I could see the lightning
Somewhere in the East
And I wished for affection
And I wished for calm
As I lay there
Nervous in the light of dawn

Of course, there have been other times in my life -- too many, probably -- when I have felt lonely and unloved.  Nights when I would wonder what was wrong with me, or why things were this way, and why it didn't seem to matter "how hard I tried", that I could not find the type of connection that I was looking for (I would come to learn more about the answers to this question, much later).  But these times, lying on the hard floor, not 10 feet away from a warm bed with a companion -- these are times that stick out in my memory.

The feelings that I had -- have, really -- are perhaps not easily captured in a short phrase, but I have referred to the experience at times as "existential loneliness".  That may be a bit of a misnomer, as I think when we say "existential loneliness" we often tend to think about how no one can truly know one another, and about the human condition, or perhaps about a lack of purpose or meaning.  I think for me this experience is a little more like a shattering of the illusion of comfort.  It's the realization that you =will= be alone, that you can never be loved always and forever, that you can feel the cold hard floor beneath you even with the warm bed within arm's reach.

And I think that is why I think of it as "existential" in nature, because it doesn't appear -- at the time, at least -- to have a solution.  To not have anyone to love, to love you, is one thing, but to have that in your life and realize that you are still at the mercy of inadequacy, of transience, of pain, is something that cuts deeper.  At least when you are alone, you know what the problem is.  But nothing can ever bring comfort forever.  You =will= be alone, and there is no one, nothing in this world that can ever fully save you from it.

Sometimes, something that can help with existential crises is to reconnect yourself with the present.  But I remain too firmly attached to the things I lost from my past in order to do that.  I would not be having this problem in the first place if I was not living with my head stuck in the ground.  Taking me somewhere new will not solve anything, for I will still look back and grieve.  Grieve everything that I have lost, and all of the sins that I have committed along the way.  How would I ever forgive myself?  Surely, my loss must be due to my sins.  And these sins are not ones where I could ask God for forgiveness.

Choosing to let go, to move on, and to seek happiness elsewhere, is the same as consigning yourself to experience the same thing, again and again.  To say that the solution is to move forward is to say that you will continue to be alone, next time too.  That is why this feeling causes my breath to quicken, and for me to feel hopeless and hapless, to feel despair and depression.  Because there is no way out.