Being Alone and Loneliness

Cheryl Barnes
Apr 26, 2017
2 min read

Being alone and loneliness…are they the same thing? Ask a widow or a widower.

Most of my life, I wasn’t popular. I wasn’t one of the pretty, desired girls everyone stared at and wanted to talk to in the hallways in high school. My parents made school work number one, so I didn’t go out much. No one wanted to date me anyway. I didn’t even get a job in any of the so-called “cool” places my classmates did. Don’t get me wrong, I had friends. Not many, but enough. I tell you these embarrassing things about me to let you know I am used to being alone. In college, I was really alone…then I met Tony. Once he came into my life, I was never alone again…until now.

He was a huge presence in my life. You couldn’t possibly be alone with that man in your life. I wasn’t, ever. Having him in my life seemed to fit that final piece of the puzzle -the one I couldn’t find until he showed up. Even when we argued, as two people who were both the oldest child in their families and both seriously alpha personalities would do, I never felt alone. He’d get mad, he’d get over it. I got mad, I got over it. We could never stand to be without each other. One would threaten to leave, then the other. But we could never leave each other. That’s how it was. We were never alone and definitely not lonely.

We were rarely apart. It would have hurt too much, deep in our souls, and we knew that without saying the words.