Being alone is simpler. Being alone is more complicated.

These phrases likely ring true for every condition in life (Something about "the foliage being more verdant in someone else's domain..." or something). However, as I do not know much about any other condition in life, I cannot really speak to it.

There it is. The "oh woe is me." It was inevitable. Now that it is out of the way everyone can rest easy. The rest is just logical progression. Tune out now. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Being completely honest - I have not always been alone. Rather, I was not always a singleton as I am now. There was a four year block of time where I belonged to someone. However, in all rational contemplation of that phase of "belonging", I probably was never more alone. In all the world, there is nothing more lonely than feeling alone when you are with someone. Such a feeling in such a situation is so unnatural that its undeniable bob to the surface of your consciousness simultaneously sets off alarm bells and yet causes you to cling to the other person more tightly. The human life raft - saving you from certain drowning or sailing you ever closer to the inevitable waterfall? The questions abound. I am with him. I feel alone. What is wrong with me? Wrong question. What is wrong with him? Once the right question has been asked and the inevitable answer surmised, the path is clear. You walk away. You tentatively pace off into the sunset. You plaintively look back, but you keep moving forward. You save yourself. Loneliness is not to be tolerated indefinitely. Something has to give.

After the long day's journey into night, there you stand. Alone. Wholly alone. Yet you do stand. Whole.

This is the fact that is easy to lose sight of.

Often I feel weak. I cry. I complain. I sigh. I mull. I complicate. I make a scene. I cry some more. But at the end of the day, I am still standing. I stand on my own. I may waiver. I may always feel broken, but I do not break.

"Blessed are the cracked, for they let in the light."

I am not alone now. I have no life companion. Hell, I don't even have a late Saturday night companion. Well, not usually. But I am not alone. I am blessed with friends of a caliber which I am not sure what I ever did to deserve (if I deserve them at all). The universe has a supreme sense of humor about a lot of things - often injecting irony at incredibly inconvenient times - and yet, it always takes care of me. There are many shortcomings to my family structure - at least as far as dealing with my sensitivities. Granted, such sensitivities are highly acute and truly unwarranted most of the time ("Chicken Little - The sky is falling!"), however, they are what makes me "me." My parents are befuddled and bewildered in the face of this. They always have been. Bless their hearts, they hang in there, but they will never understand.

So to make up for it all, the universe gave me this: my sister, my friends, my health, and my fortune (as in luck, not as in money). My friends make me feel like "me." No, that's wrong. They make me feel like me (no quotation marks necessary, no explanations necessary, no impressive verbiage necessary, no questions asked, no apologies needed, gloves off, dirty jokes appreciated, fine bottle of wine shared, cards slid under doors, flowers sent at the most appropriate times, listening to the same schpiel for the millionth time and still saying all the right things, unselfish to a tee). Actually, there it is. My friends are always themselves and in being themselves, they are all, collectively and individually, the most unselfish people I know. Whereas I have difficulty in seeing my own hands sometimes through the mists of my own angst that I allow to envelope me, I have, on so many occasions, had my friends reach out to me and offer me comfort and shelter in a time when their own pain was residing a little too close for comfort. If that is not love, I don't know what is.

Lucky, lucky, lucky me.

As of this moment, to my continual disappointment, I am not capable of being that unselfish, that giving. I can only hope to learn. A lifelong love of my own eludes me, most likely, because I am not ready for it. I don't know how. I am still learning. For now, I recognize my own shortcomings and hope that in surrounding myself with the unequaled generosity and all-embracing, unquestioning love of my friends, that such ingrained traits may find their way to my heart someday.

For now, the focus is to lessen burdens. On myself. On others.

Opportunity knocks. Fortune smiles. Love is.

Given all this racket they are making and the attention they are drawing to themselves, it shouldn't be too hard to find them....