Do you live alone?
As I rouse from dreaming about intimacy, I groan as I roll onto my side and look at the unused pillow beside me.
My hormones telling me that I have been too long without human contact.
I am not craving intimacy with a stranger.
I long for skin to skin contact with someone I can connect with on many levels.
Alas I made a conscious decision to live life alone, foolishly telling myself I do not need intimate human contact.
All my life I have slept alone. Waking every morning by oneself I realise now has had a mildly negative effect on my self esteem.
When the decision was made by me to shun people it was on the back of years of use and abuse to the point where it was imperative for me to block people out of my life.
I now have some semblance of control of my emotions. I can now differentiate between those who want to harm me and those who simply want friendship and benign human interaction.
So here I am, sleeping single in a double bed, craving intimate skin to skin contact but it seems I am destined to remain alone for the reason that prolonged interaction with someone still has the tendency to drive me a little bit crazy.
After a relatively short while I have the urgent need to get away. To run away and hide from the world at large.
A paragraph ago I wrote I now have some semblance of control of my emotions, the operative word being, "some". I do not have control of my emotions, I have, "Some semblance of Control".
I think one of the worst things about being single when you don't want to be is that people are shamed for expressing loneliness.
Everyone has needs, wants and desires and it is the decisions we have made over our life time that determines whether those needs, wants and desires will be fulfilled.
Do I regret the decisions I made all those years ago?
At the time those decisions probably saved my sanity. Today? I realise that decisions have ramifications which may not manifest for decades down the track, and I wake, alone, in a double bed when I do not really want to be alone. Not any more.
But will I be able to take the next step and make positive changes so that loneliness does not become all consuming in my later years?
My hormones telling me that I have been too long without human contact.
I am not craving intimacy with a stranger.
I long for skin to skin contact with someone I can connect with on many levels.
Alas I made a conscious decision to live life alone, foolishly telling myself I do not need intimate human contact.
All my life I have slept alone. Waking every morning by oneself I realise now has had a mildly negative effect on my self esteem.
When the decision was made by me to shun people it was on the back of years of use and abuse to the point where it was imperative for me to block people out of my life.
I now have some semblance of control of my emotions. I can now differentiate between those who want to harm me and those who simply want friendship and benign human interaction.
So here I am, sleeping single in a double bed, craving intimate skin to skin contact but it seems I am destined to remain alone for the reason that prolonged interaction with someone still has the tendency to drive me a little bit crazy.
After a relatively short while I have the urgent need to get away. To run away and hide from the world at large.
A paragraph ago I wrote I now have some semblance of control of my emotions, the operative word being, "some". I do not have control of my emotions, I have, "Some semblance of Control".
I think one of the worst things about being single when you don't want to be is that people are shamed for expressing loneliness.
Everyone has needs, wants and desires and it is the decisions we have made over our life time that determines whether those needs, wants and desires will be fulfilled.
Do I regret the decisions I made all those years ago?
At the time those decisions probably saved my sanity. Today? I realise that decisions have ramifications which may not manifest for decades down the track, and I wake, alone, in a double bed when I do not really want to be alone. Not any more.
But will I be able to take the next step and make positive changes so that loneliness does not become all consuming in my later years?
