A needle, a flower and a cockroach

A needle, a flower and a cockroach

Being with someone else and making that person feel as if they were of no importance in our life is far worse than feeling alone and miserable in the streets of Geneva. – Paulo Coelho

I have been alone and lonely many a times. Now, I hardly ever feel lonely but that is because I have finally come to understand what loneliness means to me. I have befriended it.

For a long time in my very petty and not-so-meaningful life, I have felt unwanted by people around me. It is a difficult place to be. In fact, no one wants you to be there and you do not have anywhere to go. Or you simply do not know that you have somewhere to go or that you are not aware that you can go somewhere. So, you are stuck in a place where no one regards you as anyone of importance and you, though indirectly, choose to stay.

Being in such a place became habitual to me till the time, I realized I could run away. People will always tell you to fight the demons. In my experience, that is not the best place to start coping. To fight your problems, you need to look them in the eye and for that you need to stand in front of them without panicking. Running helps. I ran till I was tired of running. I went as far as I could. Then, I looked back and I realized I had run so far that the people who surrounded me were almost non-existent.

I was surrounded by other people. They didn’t know me. And I followed the traffic rule of keeping safe distance. I started trusting my soul to choose the people I wanted to befriend. Some of the people, from whom I had ran away, caught up and became a part of my life.

I decided that I wanted to keep believing in my inner soul and also the universe that surrounded me.

To be very frank, I still run away though I am fighting.

I decided that I did not need to fight people but fight loneliness that came from people making me feel alone.

I shook hands with loneliness and let it hug me close, very close. That comforted me.

I decided that I would not make anyone who chose to stay with me feel unimportant in my life. That to me became the worst of the crimes that I could commit. I even overdid it and became a “Mommy” figure. I was still okay being that than make people feel lonely. I knew how painful it is to be made to feel lonely.

The second thing that I chose to do was befriend the universe around me which was with me unconditionally as I was with it. I had a habit of talking to things which I tried to control to fit in the universe. I decided I did not need to control it anymore. I chose to connect to the roads I walked on, to the trees that stood tall, to the plants that lingered, to the dogs that stared, to the scurrying cockroaches, to the falling leaves and flowers… They became my friends. They wanted me as much as I wanted them and I started feeling that while talking to them and caressing them.

Today, the roads gave me a needle which I would not have noticed if I was not paying attention to what the road was trying to say. I found a flower near a tree which I greet whenever I pass by. I saw a cockroach getting trampled upon by a human being and yet not giving up!!!

I would never see and observe things earlier. I wanted to be with people because I did not want to feel lonely.

However, that changed as I realized that I am lonely till I call “the lonely” my enemy. It never was an enemy, rather it was and is the best ally I could have found.

When I made “the lonely” feel unwelcome, it was sad and lonely. I stopped making it feel unwanted and useless. I stopped feeling lonely.