echoes in the dark.

I'm not sure why, but this evening, I have a feeling of intense loneliness lying upon me like a thick, greasy fog.

It's not the sort of loneliness that you can dissipate by talking to a friend or a loved one; rather, it's a deeper, more....essential(?) type of loneliness. It's soul-deep, I suppose. It's not a feeling that makes you sad, nor is it the satisfying feeling of enjoying your own company. It's just kind of...uncomfortable.

You feel as though suddenly, you have slowed down and everything that reaches your ears or comes out of your mouth oozes in and out like molasses. Every movement you make is sluggish. The world moves about you at an impossibly fast rate and you are left behind, kind of slow and helpless. Lethargic despite your best attempts. You look around with slow, stupid eyes, barely comprehending the events that happen around you as the world rattles along like a rickety gypsy caravan barreling down a winding dirt road, the echoes of bells and laughter floating back to you as you are left standing barefoot in the middle of the dark road.

Unsure.

A part of you longs for someone, anyone who may have been left behind with you. You spin through the rolodex in your head, hoping for a lightbulb to go off when you see a name. A few names make you pause, but each time, the light wavers for one reason or another, and you spin on. On and on and on until you reach the final "z" and are left with what you had before: nothing.

I'm really never sure what to think when I'm in this kind of place. When I was younger, this sort of state frightened me, upset me and brought on tears. But as an adult, I have lost my fear and learned to simply look at it and examine it like a biologist studying a specimen. This has made the experience much less troubling, but it has brought me no closer to identifying or understanding it. It simply is. There, black and sharp, and shimmering sticky, IT IS. It offers no apologies or explanations. Rather, it seems to wordlessly demand, "What will you make of me?" I feel as though it is expecting me to eventually (one of these times) understand why it is there. But I always stare, uncomprehending, until it vanishes with a dismissive exclamation, off to hibernate until its next appearance.

Will I ever understand what it truly is?

I can't help but feel an overwhelming sense that there is great potential in this dank, bizarre, musty feeling. This experience is brimming with a meaning that is right in my face, showing me in the surface of its waters the reflection of myself and MY meaning.

Yet, as through a glass darkly, all I can see are shadows.

All I can hear are echoes.

"But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars."

I've been very ill for the past few days, so I guess that's what brought it on.

There's something about being ill that cuts you down to your most essential self. You don't have the strength or stamina to put on the normal airs and pretenses that you usually make use of. You have no choice but to be genuinely, completely, exhaustedly yourself. When you have to get up to move around, you do it with the open, helpless innocence of your inner self, of your deepest inner child. Your mind is too shot to focus on the trivial, so you wander into contemplation of the bigger, more profound, more all-encompassing. Small things simply don't have enough weight to hold your focus.

I can only guess that this was the trigger because it's the only thing I can find that can account for it.

I was traveling across the city today, trying to get home in order to do some work. It's a bit chilly these days; not cold yet, but the overpowering heat is definitely retreating. I had to hop on a couple of different busses to get home because I was feeling too weak to think of walking back to my flat from the metro (although only a paltry 10-15 minute walk, I was really feeling that ill). Suddenly, as I was sitting at the bus stop in Şişli waiting for my second bus, it washed over me with the rapidity of the incoming tide: a strong, odd, but very familiar feeling that I have not felt since before I settled down into a job here and stopped backpacking or living like a student.

I had trouble identifying it at first. It felt like an old friend, and I welcomed it even before knowing what it was that I was embracing. I let it settle over me until I recognized it. It was that feeling, that strange, wild feeling of loneliness and isolation that sets you free even as it terrifies you. It is like feeling a current pull you out into the vast ocean of human experience. You have a sudden sense of the massiveness of the world and its people, of your infinite minuteness. You are overwhelmed by the reality that you can never know all the world and everything in it, that it will always be, at the end of the day, a mystery. You cannot be the master of any part of it. No level of comfort or familiarity can ever defeat this truth. On some level, all will always be foreign to you, and you will always be a foreigner.

It is easy to lose this sense of lost identity when you have a nice job, a busy schedule, a nice place to live, and enough money to do more or less what you please. You settle into a sense of normalcy, and you lose sight of the deep-down wildness of the world. As a student or a backpacker, you cannot lose it so easily; you are always living on the edge. Not having enough money helps. You are never very separate from the realities of life. I guess this is one of the reasons I've never really liked living in very nice neighborhoods: these places create a distance between you and the wilder nature of reality.

Sitting at the bus stop, sick as a dog and thinking only of lying down in my bed and ordering take-out, I felt as if a veil was being lifted from my eyes, and for the first time in nearly two years, I saw again that reality and felt again the deep truth of my own separateness and isolation. And God, was it liberating.

I truly love my own solitude. It has become sacred to me. It is this golden sliver of time in which you are truly, honestly yourself. It gives you the time and energy to delve into the eternal mystery that is one's own mind and soul. It gives you the space to connect to yourself. Isolation is not a curse but a blessing. It is a gift. Without it, where is self-discovery? Without it, where is clarity of the self? Without it, how can we reach to others with real and true Love? Knowing yourself and loving yourself honestly and genuinely allows you to love others.

Isolation does not prevent relationships; it strengthens them. It gives more depth and meaning to every encounter. It gives you the insight, love, and compassion to engage fully with the people around you. Seeing yourself is seeing others, for who around you is not, like you, a person searching for joy and fulfillment?

We are alone. All of us together are alone. Why does that need to be a bad thing? Can it not be joyful? Can we not rejoice in our opportunity to know ourselves, to open our hearts wide enough to embrace all of this mysterious, unknowable world with unconditional fervor? Can we not glory in the wondrousness of a world that is too big for our minds and egos but big enough for our hearts? We can work a lifetime to know and understand the world and ourselves, but we never fully can. Is that not exciting? Is that not a thrilling idea, to know that you will never run out of people to meet or things to experience or wonders to witness?

Because you are always alone, you are always surrounded. You are always swept by the current of the vast ocean, alone and apart yet deeply within it. Is that not intoxicating? Is that not exhilarating?

Does that not set you free?