By Nushie Adhikari
Content Warning: This article deals with themes of loneliness.
The festive season is getting closer and closer. Now more than ever, it is easy to fall into the void of loneliness.
You see couples dancing in the gleaming illumination of the Christmas lights, making plans for how they will spend the holidays together: wrapped up warm, sharing a blissful silence.
You look at them, then look at the vacant spot next to you on your own bed and wonder if that’s all it will ever be. Just a gap collecting dust, a gap that makes your bed seem colder and bigger than it is.
You don’t take up that much space and your bed feels empty even with you in it.
Photography by Nushie Adhikari
It makes you hate the holidays. Why is it that as soon as the Christmas lights go up, the world-eating void in your chest grows bigger and bigger, hungrier and hungrier?
Maybe you are just being miserable. Maybe you are resentful. Maybe you are jealous that those around you have a hand to hold to keep them warm when the days get colder and the night comes sooner.
The clouds constantly pouring with rain don’t make it better. You feel too enclosed and suffocated, when all you want is the open sky and the sunlight to bask yourself in.
Maybe that's the issue. The weather is terrible. The sun is absent and each day, you yearn for that warmth, or any warmth. On dark cold days you used to have the embrace of your parents, or even old high school friends to protect you from the dark days of winter, but now here you are. Alone.
Alone in a new city that is foreign, almost alien, but resembles a place that could exist. You are now stuck here for three more years. The thought of that makes you hate the city more and more.
You hate this city.
You are miserable.
You are alone.
You are lonely.
Everything is terrible.
This city is to blame for it.
Then you go for a walk by yourself to the beach. You stare at the oscillating waves crashing against the stony beach. It's uncomfortable to sit there, but you can’t help but be hypnotised by the rhythmic tides going back and forth, almost as if it has a heartbeat. So you continue to sit.
You think about all the people who were maybe once as melancholy as you are, who sat in the same spot as you, looking at the same glistening water.
You wonder where they might be. You wonder if they know that someone somewhere is thinking about them, even though they have never met them. You know you will never meet them, you will never know what they will look like… yet here you are thinking about them.
You think maybe in the future another lonely person will sit where you have sat, look out into the deep blue sea and think about you. There's a slight comfort in that.
You look at the endless sea and wonder why you feel so trapped in this city when you know there is so much out there. You are treating it as if it is permanent, as if it is the end and you are stuck. You have tried so hard to get here, to get where you want to be, and you know that if need be, you can try just as hard to get out of here.
You also realise you aren’t the only one in this city who is alone right now. So many of the people you see on the street- the ones sat in front of you in the library, those nursing a coffee alone in a café which is slightly over your budget- they were all lonely once. Even couples holding hands and smiling from ear to ear were alone once.
Your thoughts are endless now.
You weren’t always lonely and maybe you aren’t alone. There are so many people in this city, waiting to make more friends, who love the thought of getting to know someone. People are much kinder than you give them credit for.
You look at the people sat with their loved ones by the beach and think, they might not have known each other a few years ago, yet here they are now. Maybe they shared a class, maybe they shared a house, or maybe they met through pure coincidence and now here they are, enjoying each other’s company.
The thought of that makes you less lonely. One day you know that you will be back here again, and maybe it will rain or maybe it will be sunny, but you won’t care. You will be fine. You might share that moment with someone else or maybe you will be here again by yourself. Either way, you will be back and you will be okay, because you know that people are out there waiting for you to find them. Sometimes you have to be the one to make the first move. If you never step forward onto the path, you will never know where the path might lead.
Just like a wave going back into the vastness of the sea, nothing is permanent, even this sinking feeling that's heavy on your heart. The winter will pass and slowly the trees will colour themselves with hues. In the blink of an eye, winter will be gone.
You get up from the cold floor of the beach and you think to yourself: you will be okay. There’s someone waiting to hear your voice after so long. Maybe you’ll call them.
You will be okay.
About the Author: Nushie Adhikari (she/her)
Heya, I’m Anusha aka Nushie, currently (trying to) study journalism and media studies! You will probably find me rambling about either myths and folklore or social issues that I am passionate about, but I put the rambles to good use by writing for this magazine!
(This piece was edited by Amber Turner-Brightman)
Comments