This Unknown Body

They say, don’t go alone, don’t be alone, don’t do this alone, don’t do that alone. I believed them. I told myself don’t be alone! Just don’t.

Why? What is so wrong about being alone, going alone? Well, I mean it took me 3 years to figure that out. I surely haven’t even solved it yet but I’ve come close. I probably never will solve it, and that’s fine.

In these past 3 years I’ve found myself alone, whether that be without a significant other, without a tightly knit friend group, without certainty or comfort in the world around me. I guess I have been alone for a while, but hadn’t noticed.

This discomfort in the idea of being alone pushed me to define it, why, though, why must I define it? Well, there is comfort in knowing things, solving problems. There is comfort in thinking you have the answers to your problems. There is comfort in knowing the unknown.

But,

You can’t know the unknown, no matter how hard you try, you can’t. Trying to find this unknown is exhausting, I was exhausted. So I let it go. I stopped thinking about being alone, feeling alone, not wanting to be alone.

At this point I am maybe a year and a half in to what I am defining as my 3 year journey through figuring out this loneliness.

I am challenging myself, making new friends, doing things like exposing my own depression to a crowd, mostly of strangers, just about a year ago, at this exact show. My friends came, they supported me, I didn’t feel so alone…