[originally posted on my blog, 12/23/10: thought I'd share it here...]

Last night I sent out a tweet saying “Sometimes I feel very, very alone.”

I got a lot of replies to that tweet, which is touching really. There are some people who honestly do care, and for that I’m grateful. But I felt the need to clarify with a follow up tweet: “Feeling alone doesn’t necessarily mean I’m sad you guys. It just means I’m feeling alone. Because mostly, I am. And ultimately, we all are.”

A few people said things like “You’re never alone. Just smile!”. Though I appreciate the sentiment, that is just simply not true. Jesus doesn’t carry me when there’s just one set of footprints in the sand. There’s one set of footprints because we’re walking alone.

Essentially I really am alone. I’m 31 years old, unmarried, no kids. Officially single for 3 years now. I have a strained relationship with most of my family and I always have. Honestly, it’s better off for me with distance between us. I was emancipated when I was 15 years old. On my own = alone. This is nothing new.

Is there something wrong with this? Hell no. It is what it is. I love my alone time. In fact, I love it so much that I really don’t go out much anymore. I’m weary of new people in my life. I like the way things are and I don’t want anyone coming along to mess it up and bring chaos. I do not miss the chaos. I’ve gone out of my way to rid my life of a lot of people that used to be fixtures over the past few years. I don’t have the patience or the energy to deal with Other People’s Bull Shit that I used to have. I don’t feel the same need to save the lost as I used to. I’m too busy saving myself.

Those who have remained are people I can count on. People I don’t have to question (much). People who are there for me and give a shit. I’m lucky there are so many, really, left since the great purge.

Do I get lonely? Of course I do. Who doesn’t? The holidays exacerbate those feelings, when all around my friends who are coupled off make plans with their full families. When they are boarding flights to spend time with the ones who matter the most… and I’m hanging out in my apartment with my dog… the safety sometimes feels a bit too safe. Really though, even those with husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends, children, and wonderful families… even they get lonely.

It isn’t fair to fill the empty spaces with sacharine affirmations. “You are never alone.” is a lie. It’s an unrealistic expectation. We are born alone and we will die alone. That isn’t pessimistic, it’s just true. It’s the way it is. Life isn’t falling apart, depression isn’t setting in. Life is full of valleys and peaks. It’s okay to feel like you’re an island sometimes.

There is beauty in happiness and love, and there is beauty in loneliness too. Without it, love would seem a little less colorful when it inevitably arrives. It’d be less appreciated, less treasured. There is no darkness without light. There is no light without darkness.

Just stalked my old LiveJournal and checked out my bio. This is what I had under “Interests” a good 7 years ago:

420, 80’s, accessories, acid-jazz, acting, analyzing, aronofsky films, art, attitude, auditioning, barbara bui, barneys new york, bisexuality, bjork, bonfire madigan, breakfast at tiffany’s, california, candles, chanel, cherries, classic rock, clothing design, coloring outside the lines, colors, cooking, crafting, crocheting, dancer in the dark, dancing, daring, debating, deco, deviousness, diesel, dior, dolce & gabbana, dreaming, eley kishimoto, elton john, emotions, event planning, fabrics, florida, fonts, freedom, friends, friendster, funk, games of chicken, ghetto fabulous, glam, guess, hbo, helmut lang, hip-hop, hollywood, hugging, i love my mac, inspiration, intellectual chess, interior design, italian vouge, jam sessions, janis joplin, joking, kareoke, laughing, le tigre, live music, lovers, mad about you, makeup, manicures, manifestation, marc jacobs, marilyn monroe, martinis, miss kitten, missoni, miu miu, mod, modeling, modest mouse, music, my 3 cats, my best friend, nas, new york, old school adidas, opinionated, outkast, partying, passion, peaches,photography, piercings, pinup girls, pissing people off, poetry, politics, pop-art, prada, pucci, punk, r&b, risque, rock & roll, romanticism, satire, scarface, sex and the city, sexuality, shopping, show tunes, soul, spiritual evolution, stella mccartney, symbolism, synthpop, talking, tattoo’s, teasing, textures, the blues, the pretenders, the professional, the sopranos, the velvet underground, the white stripes, tickling, tracy & the plastics, tuleh, valley of the dolls, varga, vintage, virgin megastore, von dutch, wine, winning, writing, wu-tang

Ha.

Pretty much everything would still be the same if I wrote this today. The music would be updated of course. And I definitely wouldn't have put "Von Dutch". When Britney Spears started wearing it, it was all downhill from there.

Have you guys checked out the Suicide Girls blog yet?!?!

What do you think of it?

When I was little my mother used to tell me, “I swear Alana, you’re so smart you’re stupid.”. Let’s skip the Freudian field day for another blog post and cut to the chase: my mother was right. Just, in a different way than I’m sure she meant it.

I’m one of those people that has to process a situation from every imaginable angle. Then I consider every possibility for each angle. What winds up happening is not unlike a dog turning around a few times before settling into a good spot on the couch.

The more I think about things, the more I realize that I know absolutely nothing. In some areas of life, it comes in useful. For example where it comes to work or creative projects, it’s what makes me so good at brainstorming ideas and imagining potential, it helps me cultivate a unique perspective.

In other areas though, it can be a burden. Thought process is, I think, an attempt at control in a world where we have very little. If you run through infinite outcomes in your mind, surely one of them might be somewhere along the lines of how things will wind up. Then one can conjure a plan of response to each situation accordingly and always stay a few steps ahead. I imagine the best case scenario, the worst possible scenario, countless variables that could reveal themselves… winding up in the exact same place I started, knowing nothing and sometimes understanding even less than I did at the beginning.

But consider this: when I walk away understanding less, it allows me to understand more. In un-knowing something I previously thought I knew, I’ve opened possibilities that didn’t before exist. I’ve torn down walls. Fog has lifted so I can at least see where I’m going to navigate. Better to think anything is possible than to limit yourself with preconceived predictions in a better or worse direction.

It’s not something I think I’ll ever grow out of or evolve past, and I don’t really want to. Though I drive myself crazy sometimes, mixing my abundance of passion and emotion with my thought tornadoes: more often than not I wind up finding a calm in the eye of the storm. Somehow, in the realization of unknowing, I find liberation. I find a way to center myself amidst the chaos, to appreciate the charm and surprise in watching how life finds a way to always throw in plot twists and magic where you couldn’t possibly have imagined to see them. I’m offered excitement in place of trepidation. I discover my edge.

There’s adventure and romance and promise in the unknown.

In the eye of the storm, the best we can do is be true to ourselves given what’s put before us. You’ll be right and wrong all at once. It will be worse than you think and better than you expect. Beyond that I find that if you allow the tornado to lift you up, more often than not when things subside your world will go from black and white to technicolor.

Just ask Dorothy.

❤ from my blog