So I’m alone again. And sometimes I wonder how many people out there are lonely. Is it wrong to be lonely? My loneliness has a kind of comfort. It is the comfort of not being seen, not being noticed. It is the comfort to disappear within yourself to where nothing matters. Not your weight. Not your achievements. And all that makes you significant is... the next breath.
Is being lonely a bad thing? Do we all really have the busy, social, hectic lives so easily portrayed in films, magazines and books? Sometimes I have nothing to do. These are the times my fingers start itching and the fist grabs my lungs and tries to push me into the space that I spend all day trying to forget. What really matters? Going on and pushing through. Sometimes I feel that I am the only person. And I stop and look at the world around me and it’s fucked up.
Today a homeless girl was selling flowers. The flowers, I won’t know what they’re called, were still dripping with soil and their roots were curling out. And, as you do, I avoided eye contact but I chose that moment to light my cigarette. The smoke pulled into my lungs and, as I sat down, the girl sat next to me. Despite the smoke of my cigarette I could smell days’ worth of sweat, vomit, dirt and urine on her. She was wearing a large red sweater inside-out and back-to-front and she looked at me with... hope. I held to her the key to something bigger, something she wasn’t a part of.
And then she started talking as I smoked. Her front tooth was chipped and I was thinking that it’s so strange that her hands are a darker black than her face. She spoke but I could not make out her words. I sat, listening without hearing, blowing my smoke into the air. She had no place to go. This much I realised. I gave her two cigarettes and a twenty. And then I walked away.
I wonder if I could have made a difference. I wonder what I think makes me so special that I have the power to determine where someone’s next meal is coming from. And I probably can’t change her life. I probably won’t be able to save her. But, sometimes, I wonder about the acts of kindness in my life.
I remember that a stranger once bought a scared little girl a chocolate after watching her world crash down around her. Such a small thing. A KitKat. And yet, I remember that every day of my life. So, as I walked away, I wish that I had enough courage to do ... something. Even if it was just a hug
