The best thing about loneliness is that, after awhile, it takes a shape. You can hold it in your hands or stand in front of it and admire its textures and luminosity, and you can name it -- rainwall, moonfruit, needlebed -- but whatever you do, it's yours. No one can separate you from your loneliness unless you let it go.
The worst thing about loneliness is its unerring ability to return once you've surrendered it. One winter, in a field between two big American cities, I sat in the frozen grass and drank wine and named my loneliness. I named it fever, because the lonelier I became, the more I burned. And years later, when I sent it out the door with a bus ticket and a little money, I thought I was sadly and wholly free. But wherever and however I live, there is always a cold sleepless one o'clock that finds me answering a scratch at the door. My fever is always standing there, simple and grateful as a lost dog, snow in its fur, eyes bright with burning.
The worst thing about loneliness is its unerring ability to return once you've surrendered it. One winter, in a field between two big American cities, I sat in the frozen grass and drank wine and named my loneliness. I named it fever, because the lonelier I became, the more I burned. And years later, when I sent it out the door with a bus ticket and a little money, I thought I was sadly and wholly free. But wherever and however I live, there is always a cold sleepless one o'clock that finds me answering a scratch at the door. My fever is always standing there, simple and grateful as a lost dog, snow in its fur, eyes bright with burning.
VIEW 4 of 4 COMMENTS
I think if it's really yours and you have named it then it is beyond letting go (if it ever were possible). It can then become a kind of freedom.