Tu me manques.

This has been a difficult post for me to write because it’s about loneliness and I don't always feel lonely, which is a wonderful thing. But today the waves that are a balance between loneliness and whatever it's opposite is reached high tide again. So here I am, months after I started this, writing. 

A pen appeared and the god said:

"Write what it is to be

man." And my hand hovered

long over the bare page,

until there, like footprints

of the lost traveller, letters

took shape on the page's

blankness, and I spelled out

the word "lonely." And my hand moved

to erase it; but the voices

of all those waiting at life's 

window cried out loud: "it is true."

                                   The Word by RS Thomas

Loneliness is something that I think everyone experiences differently. For me, loneliness is usually me missing someone. The French expression for “I miss you” is “tu me manques” (maybe you’ve seen this before) which translates to something like “you are missing from me.” And I think that’s what loneliness is. My mom was here for Christmas and it was wonderful! I loved showing her around and spending time, just me and her. But when she left, I experienced stronger loneliness than before she came, even though I had just spent a fabulous week with her. She was (and is) missing from me. Now this week one of my sisters is playing an important character in her high school's musical and I'm missing it.

Like I wrote above, loneliness comes in waves. Some days I see a picture of something or, like in today's case, I watch a show and somehow something reminds me of what is missing from me. I thank God that this isn't a perpetual state or I would have gone home months ago. But I think it's important to speak to our loneliness because like the poem states, loneliness is part of what it is to be human. We all experience it. And I'm not going to write about how to get over said loneliness because I don't think that's what is important here. I think naming and acknowledging my feeling is important. And knowing that, in time, this will pass. Because the ocean doesn't permanently stay at high tide and neither will loneliness.