THE GLASS CHILD
CHARLOTTE ERIKSSON

Loneliness is only lonely if you let it be

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November comes again and the man across the street shovels leaves like meditation. I expect to be lonely when the dark falls, but I also expect a hand to hold and neither seems just right this year. I turn my day around to escape the nights. I wake up at 4 a.m. because the sadness doesn’t come until later and I want to be asleep before it does.

 

I could just leave. I could just call it finished, say the season is over, thank you for the memories, get up and leave. It would be simple. I would love it. The feeling as I walk home today would be so different. Liberated. Like a burden falling off my shoulders because somehow I did not know, but learned, that the sacrifices and good deeds you try to do for another person can turn into heavy weights for them, too. Too heavy to carry. And the “thank you” I hoped to find each morning, from someone I thought I helped out, was replaced by “why” and questions, silence even. Telling me to stop.

 

I did just try to love him. I did just try to act with serenity and heart. I did just try to see how I was free as a bird and he was not so I could fly to him and pictured it wonderful. He would greet me with open arms and say, “Thank you for coming back!” and he would take me in and show me his house. Say, “You can sleep here and this is your chair, where we’ll have coffee in the morning and long sober talks at night, and I will show you around.” I would smile and feel loved and love in return because I would feel appreciated for the sacrifice I made … for us?

Instead, he asked me why, said it’s heavy when I’m here. I found myself hurrying home every morning by myself full of shame and regrets, sadness and anger,

because how stupid could I be to think someone could love

in the way I love

and how stupid could I be to think I had the right 

to count on someone,

rely on someone,

and how stupid could I be to think someone

would want to build a nest

with me.

a home

with me.

the most homeless of them all who never seems to learn.

I’m no one to build homes with, only temporary moments of whatever I can offer in the moment and I forgot that and tried to be settled. available. but people don’t want that. They want fragmented moments of me, only at my best, preferably twice a year when they’re bored of ordinary.

 

Anyway. I’m fine. It’s November and I’m writing lists of things to see now. I’d like to go to Prague again. I’d like to go to Paris. Berlin is nice in the fall. I just bought a piano … I’ll sell it on eBay.

Loneliness is only lonely if you let it be.