Secluded Alleys

I always thought that loneliness is poorly understood as its seen to be that there is no one around you and there for you but its nothing like that even the extroverts can be lonely it's all about people not being enough regardless. I stand around people that love me, that feel solitude towards me, that help to alleviate my pain and struggles for me and I still feel as to being in despair. There is no one to accompany me today. No, not even the wind as he howls and screeches his way past a damaged lamppost leaving me to mourn my way through the city alone.There is misery in these streets. It has soaked into the sidewalk cracks and into the graffitied walls. It is in the stores that were once loaded with designer goods and now house everything for a dollar. It is in the back alleys where the few restaurants who persist in trading have their garbage searched several times a day, and not just by the cats. It is etched in every gaunt and dejected face that has given up on life getting any better than mean survival on mean streets; and those faces become more ubiquitous with each passing year. Some sleep in the streets rather than take the bed bugs in the shelters, some cling to their holy books as their last hope for something better; not in this life of course, but after they pass of pneumonia or some highly treatable infection. They have become garbage - damaged bodies and damaged minds. Each one of them has a story that could snap your heart in two, so don't ask. Pass through with your windows up, doors locked, music on... I've gone as far as I can on this path alone. I've learned how to walk alone, how to carry others, how to cope with and solve my problems alone. Standing next to the hectic street with swarming people wanting to reach their destinations passing past each other only made me look to the secluded alley. In a uncanny way I felt like I could correlate with the alley. It felt like such a contrast of hectic energy next to a vacant spot. It almost felt too familiar like the feeling i feel when i talk to my loves ones whilst using my disguise of happiness to suppress my true emotion that my loneliness seems to devour. This loneliness is a vice on my heart, squeezing with just enough pressure to be a constant pain. It kills me every day just a little bit more, taking what was once my inner light and replacing it with a darkness that overshadows each moment.I was stuck in a dream, struggling to get back to reality. Why can't I acknowledge my loneliness as I stand here in these swarming streets. Is it because they wouldn't understand my torment? Is that foolish? It appears like I will never see the days of me feeling fulfilled with my desired emotion. I just want to tear enraged with my emotion my disguise off and for someone to notice my eternal agony. Can they not see me scream directly into their soul?No matter how much I screamed for help, no voice would come out ... or so I thought. In truth there was simply no-one left to hear, or rather no-one with the capacity to respond.I stood on the brink of something I couldn't describe. The weight of everything seemed to press down on my shoulders and I struggled to take even a single step forward. It was too much. All of it. And somehow, I kept moving. But every step cost me. The darkness grew darker; the pain grew sharper; all of it seemed to only grow in strength and I began to wonder if things could ever get better.

But I never said a word. Sometimes I wonder if that smile- the horribly fake smile- is ever seen through. If someone ever notices that sad, broken look in my eyes that I see in the mirror. If they see beauty where I see ugliness. And then I laugh, a bitter, sarcastic laugh, at myself. Nobody cares. No one notices. They never seem to, do they?

I've fought for years. I just march on.. I know what I need. I need someone to save me from this loneliness, to make me feel worthy and loved, worthy of being loved. I shed a tear at the thought I might always be like this, hidden away in this barren home waiting for time to pass only to find out I'm still alone. I know everything about my darkness, yet I know nothing about why it haunts me, nothing about why it sometimes settles for days and other times appears for a fleeting hour. There is only one way I can explain it. You know when something bad has happened, and the next day when you wake up in the morning, for those first 3 seconds your mind is deliciously blank, you remember nothing and nobody? Then it hits, your heart drops, your stomach sinks and you squeeze your eyes shut, hoping it was all a bad dream? When the darkness comes, that is what I feel like, every moment of everyday, until it passes. My body feels hollow and full of sadness all at once, I can't remember ever being happy. I don't know what I'm sad about, but it's bone crushing sadness, the kind that makes you clench every muscle in your body to try and squeeze it out. The kind of sadness that makes you unable to think about the future. The kind of sadness that makes you feel like you're alone, even when you're surrounded by friends or family. It's the kind of sadness they send you to a doctor for, as if a walking PhD will be able to solve everything by prescribing the right pills to lull you into the only state worse than lonely-- unfeeling. Until this suffering finds its way out, I can only live restricted to my happiness and participate in my social life whilst I gaze off into the secluded alley.