"somewhere only we know..."

when does loneliness hit us harder-when we are in need, or when we are surrounded by joy?

*it may seem impossible to be surrounded by joy when lonely...this is not true. i have come to the conclusion that one can find joy in many things and even within oneself...and as another aside, the "loneliness" i speak of can take place on several levels. one can be lonely for family but surrounded by friends, or lonely for a lover when surrounded by family and friends...or any combination of such.
but i digress*

i guess i really can't answer this for anyone but myself.
and i really can't form i 100% certain, 100% concrete answer.

when i feel like i need something, i.e. when i have had a shitty day, when i think there is a ghost in my apartment (no, really), when i lock myself out of the car in the pouring rain in the middle of BFE...yeah. feeling alone, and lonely, is the worst feeling in existence. such occurrences seem to just mock you..."hahaha, loser. look at you. your day/week/month/life SUCKS and to top it all off, nobody cares, you are ALL ALONE." but see, everyone feels like this sometimes. i know this. why don't the lonely people get off the pride and just...wait. i know the answer to this. i won't go there.

but.
i think it's worse to feel lonely when surrounded by joy.
i want to run, to shout, to sing, and i have nobody to share this with! nobody! i hate it! and the loneliness is not a feeling of "nobody exists" but one of "nobody exists who will care about this like i do, who will get this, who will get me."
i get this feeling at least once a (good) day.
tonight i went walking, in the rain, to buy organic raspberries for breakfast tomorrow. the music on my ipod was good, the rain was light...i got home, took a hot bath, wrapped up in a blanket and sat down to write. and i can't describe how i feel inside, but...i really do enjoy all this time to myself. i do. but sometimes i wish i could share it.

and i feel an emptiness...

but i came to some conclusions on this walk. some things i have been thinking about lately...
more wisdom from elizabeth gilbert's eat, pray, love...a friend says something to her along the lines of "he cracked your heart open so that the light could come in..." talking about a broken heart.
(side note: i find the name of gilbert's heart-breaker amusing. heh.)
hm. well. my fucking soul was blown open, and i might add that i guess it was done so all the badness could seep out at the same time the light comes in...kind of like a transfusion.
in yoga today, the teacher was saying, as usual, "your mantra is 'lock your knee.'" but since i am a veteran student i always have my own mantra. lately it has been "fatpigfatpigfatpig" but it is doing me no good, so today i tried "badness out, beauty in" and it worked much better.

i realize also that people tend to run away, give up, leave, get pissed off, or whatever, for reasons that i guess later they find out are things that, you know, other people do also. i NEVER said i was quiet. i will shout this to your face. i will throw all the bad stuff out right away so people know what is really there. then i start to let the good things show. it's just how i work. kind of like, the opposite of how most people work. it might take a year, two years, for truly good things to start peeking their heads out...but hey...what did that ketchup commercial teach us?

i'm inspired. i want to go to indonesia, and meet medicine men. i want to go back to pahoa, and hug a banyan tree again. i want to live in chicago, and i want to spend a lot of time in the mountains. i want to find, and ask, and discover, and laugh, and cry, and be constantly active, and write. i guess lately i've been so caught up in what is going on right now that i keep forgetting that it's all a way to get to these places i want to be. i just have to figure out how to enjoy this right now while i have it.

because.
that was the point all along. the plans...well, those were for after the "right now." but me, i was the one who remembered that.
but hey.
i guess now, the darkness is seeping out, and the light is pushing its way in...s-l-o-w-l-y.


as i always, always, always said:

"nothing that's worth it is ever easy."