I  journal mornings with stream of consciousness exercises, and
I’m again participating in Linda Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday.  whenever I have time.  I write to a timer, 15-20 minutes, no editing except spelling, and of course I add my art!  You can do it too!
The Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is as follows: “This is what I want you to do: 1. Grab the closest book to you when you sit down to write your post. 2. Open it to a random page. 3. Locate the first complete sentence on that page. 4. Use the first three words of that sentence to start your post, then take it from there–write whatever comes to mind. That’s it! Have fun!”

 

“Loneliness carries a…”

I can’t get the rest of the sentence out of my head, like a drum beat, so continuing…

“Loneliness carries a stigma that hampers efforts to help sufferers
because it implies that you are a social failure.” I may be paraphrasing
but I’ve been thinking about that damn sentence that I read a week ago and
it opened to that page again.  I don’t know if that is always true, but I do know that it is true if you’ve been slammed hard enough and long enough and repeated rejections
make it difficult when you make the big effort to step out.  And I don’t know if it is true if you are LONELY FOR rather than LONELY.  There is a difference.

Deeply missing someone is LONELY FOR… Mitchell and I have only been apart twice for a short time and I my heart ached for him and I felt something essential missing.  I miss my baby brother but not my mother, nor other members of my family.  I miss one girlfriend from long ago who I think took some of my ability to laugh with her.  And frankly I have missed a couple of my fur friends more than some human bodies.

That kind of missing doesn’t make you think there is something fundamentally wrong with YOU.  Your heart beating a drum of longing is essential to being a loving being.

But being rejected by a community, be it the kids at school or an entire town makes you feel as if there is something wrong with you, and that hobbles you, making it harder to be relaxed enough to reach out.  It reeks like stink, making it harder to connect.

For the rules, go to Linda’s blog;  feel free to join the fun!