Alone

Sitting at Old Chicago, I'm the lone single-top on a Wednesday night. Surrounded by families, dates, couple friends, groups and me. I've been effective at being alone, very effective. My contact list on my iPhone remains untouched, the ringer sound something I'm so unfamiliar with I don't even remember what it is any more. Email notifications ding with spam. I am very much alone at this moment.

I don't know what I feel about all this alone time. Something I once craved with such reckless abandon is now common place and ordinary. I always enjoy the quiet of my mind in the midst of chaos. But I'm not so sure any more.

I'm startled out of my brain by the waitress, kindly smiling at me as she brings my check. I see the pity in her eyes. I blush slightly. Is this what the world is now? Conversations with waitresses and prospective students on the phone. The last time I had a face-to-face conversation was a month ago with an out of town friend. These days it just doesn't happen any more.

I watch the soccer team after practice party. The men conglomerate and jostle over the practice footage. The women sit at another table, awkward and uneasy. I wonder how many of the people will glance over at my table and wonder about me, why I'm alone? why would I so publicly display that I have so little public contact that I would go alone to a busy restaurant and not think twice about it?

Is there a difference between being alone and lonely? Definitely. Alone doesn't always mean lonely. When your life is full of kids, husband, friends, job, chaos it's nice to be alone. When your life is full of kid and your number one companion called thoughts, it's a little different. I've been lonely as of late. Realizing how little I have in my life when my son isn't here. Soon enough he will be here all the time. My loneliness will cease or will it?

Will I become one of those parents who only talk to their child? Whose world revolves around the child? Will I build the wall so high that momma will protect her child so much he will never leave? But then I remind myself that I'm just another person to the world, forgettable, replaceable, irrelevant. To him I am the world. I am the sun. The moon. The stars. The Alpha and the Omega. For now.

I am lonely. I am lonely in a way that I can't express. When I remove the noise, all I have is me. But I did this to myself. I did it on purpose. I did it so I could listen and learn to be ok in my loneliness. It's demented in a way, a lot of ways.

As I sit in the restaurant, watching intently the masks come and go in conversations I wonder how many of those people are happy? does the company make you happy? or are you slowly dying as I was but you are too afraid to sit alone at a busy restaurant on a Wednesday?

In the end maybe I'm the idiot to have made myself be alone. Maybe I'll find that I should have kept the mask on, life is easier that way. But maybe, just maybe this will all be worth it in the end. some day, some where. it will all be worth it and i will not be lonely ever again.