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The Opiate of Loneliness

Personal story of growing up lonely

By Varden FriasPublished 6 years ago 3 min read
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Loneliness never provided a sensation. When I walked alone, it was usual and quite ordinary. Like wearing another layer of skin, I didn't mind it and often it kept me warm from the vile chill from the rest of the world. As a kid, it was second nature and as an adult, it's the Snuggie I crawl into when my hatred of humanity reaches its pinnacle. There are those times, however, where loneliness is excruciating.

My childhood, or at least eighty percent of it, was spent wandering around the annals of my backyard. There were three people I could call friends. One of which I only saw once a week. Another was five years my junior and had a knack for pestering me. The other moved away to another city quickly when the gangs started encroaching our podunk country town. As odd as that sounds, my little hometown is currently a drug hub but ah that's a story for another day. Being alone was part and parcel to my childhood existence, as you may have gathered, so it comes as no surprise that now it's become more of an addiction to hide away into a padded iron maiden as often as I can.

Instead of studying, I wandered. Instead of socializing, I wandered. Instead of exploring the great outdoors of my country home, I wandered around in that backyard until I memorized the cracks in the dirt and the nooks of every tree. The trees spoke to me, the animals spoke to me, the damned dirt spoke to me. I hardly knew it then, but I’d amassed a menagerie of characters like the loon in the padded cell, only I hardly knew it then. Loneliness had grown on me to the point of madness cleverly masked by a complaisant attitude to my surroundings. Why question that which made me happiest? To be alone and not risk outside influence, now that was a skill I had artfully mastered.

It wasn’t until I met others to whom I pay my dearest respects and affections that I learned the sting of true loneliness. To feel that dark world bereft of those you truly care about when all you had needed was yourself is the greatest agony this earth can conjure. As an adult, I got the whipping of a lifetime as I learned that my days of wandering the earth alone like a vagabond would have to come to an end. Recently, my journies have taken me on frightening adventures. Homeless shelters, couch surfing, hallucinations, wild-eyed jamborees, fleeing into the night to escape the haunting of my childhood. The demon swore to stay near me so that I may never face true loneliness. A demon bound by blood to repeat the incantation: “I will never leave your side, for you are my best friend.”

Now I’m older and haven’t seen the demon in ages. Friends and lovers replaced him but never filled the void he carved into my soul. I promised him too in a way to never let anyone in to completely fill that place. The puzzle shape would never fill out with the shape of anyone else, never burst with the love’s warm repletion, never feel quite as whole as it should.

At times I mourn the absence of the perfectly shaped ice shard to inhabit that space in me. Loneliness is a drug, the opiate of my soul. Its bite reminds me of my social inadequacy yet I long to be alone to speak to myself, to sit my back against a tree and chat with the demon as though he beckons with a gently suave smile: “Come hither, sit a spell. It’s been a while, old friend.”

It's short, sweet and to the point for all the busy people who want to start their first novel but don't know where to begin. Pick up a FREE copy to get started on that novel you've been dying to write!

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About the Creator

Varden Frias

Aspiring author of gothic horror, dark fantasy and occasional LGBT coming of age story. I will read pretty much anything: fiction, nonfiction, graphic novels, etc. If it's a cool story with cool characters, I will probably give it a read.

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