Ashlyn Marie

---

Loneliness is a word that is too often used to describe a certain time period alone. In reality this word, at least to me, means something completely different. The word has more meaning than you could imagine. Loneliness is something you feel deep down inside your heart, for more than a day. It’s the type of feeling you get inside yourself without knowing or realizing what it actually is, and then it hits you. See, you can be in a room or auditorium with thousands of people around you, and realize, you are a lonely person. You may realize this because you are in the auditorium by yourself for a seminar no one would accompany you on, or you may realize this fact because the two people sitting on either side of you are oblivious to your problems.

I figured out I was lonely sitting in an empty gym. It was mid-July, hot, and for some reason I found myself sitting on a bleacher, twirling my hair, all alone, in a dark gym. See, I wasn’t completely oblivious to the loneliness, I knew it was there, but that day I realized, I was alone. I realized it because as I sat there in a deserted gym, on some unknown school ground, I was alone. Not alone in the gym per say, alone in the world. My parents had died, my sister had gone to travel the world. My brother went missing, and I had no significant other to help me through anything. I realized this very fact when something brushed my shoulder.

I turned and there was nothing there but darkness. I wasn’t the type to get scared but when I felt it again I stood up, looking for some sort of sane explanation, but there was nothing. I then felt the same thing brush my shoulder. I screamed, and listened to the echo of my voice, yet nothing happened. There I was, screaming bloody murder, I had no one to call, no one with me, no one to help me, it was just me, the darkness, and an empty gym. I thought for awhile, and then all I could think to do was run, run from everything, in my mind I thought somehow if I ran I would get friends, a family, and I wouldn’t be lonely anymore, but as I sit here, writing, it’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard. I finally ran out of breath for anything, and collapsed onto the ground. I looked around at the sunny atmosphere, the big blue sky, today was supposed to be a happy day. I screamed once again hoping and praying someone would come, but they didn’t, it was that very moment, I knew the true meaning to loneliness.

As you are reading this, I’m sure you’re thinking how crazy it is for someone to make themselves suffer, be lonely, when they could so easily go out into that big beautiful world of people and make friends. Well, let me tell you, it’s not so easy, that big beautiful world can also be a mean, harsh world, not very accepting at all, especially not of me.