Hello Aloneness My Old Friend

Outside I hear the rain, it cries

In a room full of grey curled up in a little ball I rock back and forth soothing my aching sorrow

Outside the sun shines

It rains inside my head

Sorrow takes me by the hand and mops my falling tears with soft wispy clouds

We travel deep and go past the point of no return

Stretched before me lie my fears as far as the eye can see

A derelict field clad in black partially obscured by a menacing rising charcoal mist

On this day I remain present with my pain

Paralysed I witness an awful reality

As the rain pounds my head I face my demons

I check my breathing

I live

I do not die

What is this fear?

I step inside it and feel how it asserts its power over me

I want to run but my shoes stay put

Aloneness!

There is no-one here

I am the abandoned child

I am alone inside my painful thoughts yet I search for something that I have forgotten

I know not what it is but internal unrest indicates something is misplaced within me

My life – each rejection cementing a core belief in aloneness

I rise higher and glimpse a field the colour white behind the blackness that chokes my soul

White roses as far as the eye can see greet me their sweet aroma filling my nostrils bringing peace to my tormented heart

In the distance I see a tree, its heart shaped leaves sway in the breeze

Ribbons hang from every branch in all the colours of the rainbow

I hung my wishes on this tree so very long ago before I could forget who I was

It has been standing in the same place, a little way behind my fears for the longest of times

Its roots reach deep into the earth and its branches touch God in heaven

I read the wishes on every ribbon and on many of the branches are special messages and well wishes from my friends in heaven

I fall to my knees and in gratitude begin to pray as my eyes are opened to such divine beauty

How foolish to believe that I am all alone when the whole of nature is in a constant flux of song and dance

I had learnt to hear less

See less

Feel less

Taste less

Love less

Be less

Yet how ironic that only through aloneness could this gift reveal itself to me

For it was only in the stillness and the quiet that I could have come to rest in this place

Here I learnt to hear more

See more

Feel more

Taste more

Love more

Be more

And I thank this fear

For only through standing outside its door and finding the courage to walk through it was the truth revealed