Inside out

I had come to the conclusion that loneliness had nothing to do with the number of people around. It wasn’t the lack of interaction, but the triviality of the connection. The fact that I locked myself in that apartment, closed all the windows, and left myself sink into darkness was the outcome and not the reason why I was lonely. I missed being part of something, the sense of belonging. Small talk and shallow feelings just didn’t sit well with me.

The murk all around was a glimmer of how I felt inside. It seemed that turning the lights on would be a betrayal of the emotions I experienced at that very moment.

Not that I didn’t want it or didn’t miss it. Oh, I did. I loved the summer days, the brightness of the midday sun, the glaze that forces you to close your eyes in bewilderment. But when nighttime comes, you can’t just stare at the chandelier and pretend it is daylight.

So I let it come and stay.

I poured a glass of wine and watched from the window, through the white curtain, as the moon started its shift. My apartment was immersed in the lack of sun rays.

“Let there be light.” I whispered, quoting the Creator. Before that one command, the Earth had been described as without form and void. Quite a definition, I thought. Darkness was an empty canvas, regardless of the color it displayed.

The words from the Bible kept coming to my mind.

And darkness was over the face of the deep. 

That was another line I could relate to. The deeper I went into my mind, the more darkness I encountered. There is a very thin line between reality and the perception of it, and that’s a dangerous place to linger on. At some point, all I felt was enhanced by the ideas playing in my mind, and that was a black hole I knew I shouldn’t jump into.

I wondered if there was a way out. Was it possible to come from emptiness to fulfillment? From depth to surface? From darkness to light? Were all those concepts intrinsically attached to each other? 

Maybe the mind was like a womb, destined to create and then deliver. Keeping things inside for longer than the amount of time they needed to be formed was deadly. Yes, that was my conclusion. I needed to give birth.

My thoughts didn’t seem yet complete, but maybe they needed more space than I had inside in order to fully develop.

I placed my half-empty glass of wine on the table, spilling some of its content on the dark wood. Oddly, that didn’t bother me so much and I didn’t even clean it. I had some more important matters to attend to. I walked to my bedroom and promptly reached for a notebook, resting peacefully between the only two books on my shelf. It was dusty, hadn’t been touched in a while. I turned on the lampshade.

I grabbed a pen and lied in bed, opening my journal and engraving words into it. 

At first, they came in a haste and didn’t make so much sense. They were screaming for attention like a newborn who had been expelled from its comfortable cave, and now needed some other source of protection. I held them with care, and after a while, they started to calm down. We were together. We were one.

I always thought that writing was the best way of uncovering myself before my own eyes. When words were written, they spoke back to me. The best of it: there was no judgment. As I undressed my soul, all my scars and flaws came to sight. Somehow, they looked beautiful in handwriting.

As the words were born, so was I. Alive and anew, once again connecting my insides with the world around me. I could see myself from a different perspective, and that sight extended to the people I loved, the choices I had made, and the paths I had taken. I forgave them for the fault they didn’t know they had. I released them from the obligation of reading and understanding my words. The loneliness gave in and a sense of freedom took its place. Suddenly I realized that my connection with anything, with anyone, depended solely on my connection with myself. I knew then that it was the way out I was looking for. My depths, darkness, and emptiness held hands with their counterparts. 

I wrote for hours until the heaviness in my chest turned into tears, and then smiles, and then loud laughs, and then sorrow, and then despair, and then hope.

The end was very different from the beginning. My words had soothed and sounded like an older version of the first ones. Now they were an adult, carrying wisdom and understanding. I reveled in that feeling for a little while.

I closed the notebook and looked at the clock. It marked 6 am. I hadn’t had any sleep that night, but instead of feeling tired and grumpy, I was full of energy.

I walked to the window and, for the first time in weeks, opened the curtains. The skies were starting to turn from dark to light blue. Light.

“Let there be light, and there was light.” I concluded my recall of the Scripture.

A few minutes later the sun started its way up the firmament. I watched it intently. The clouds broke apart, the same way an army would do to receive its General. I felt that nature, just like me, had stopped to observe its arrival and settlement. Slowly the city was swallowed by brightness. As if listening to a call to start the day, the first cars and pedestrians started to appear.

I opened the window; just seeing it wouldn’t do anymore. I needed to feel it.

And there it was, in my flesh and on my skin, the warmth of a new day inviting me to the light, from inside out.