Where am I supposed to go
When all of my joy, life experience, lives in my head?
I am equally blissful yet alone at the same time.
Immersing in the ideas that I love,
and am hungry for learning and challenge.
Pushing the limits of a human potential
Believing that a day is not well-lived
If it is not sucked dry of every possible challenge
that might come to my awareness at that time.
You’ll find me in front of a screen
absorbed in thinking about systems and design
and lost in a terminal and my own head.
There is no greater place of flow and joy
than disconnected from the world in that space.
But you’ll find me also, much later
In the quiet of my room, looking around.
Realizing that I am entirely alone.
And the same intensity of focus and joy
and desire to think about things fully, deeply
Overhwelms others, and pushes them away.
It is hard to consolidate those two things
and I often feel like I have to choose.
To be true to my authentic self, and embark
on every intellectual journey and challenge
and visciously, attacking sources of knowledge,
eating through information with 1000 hungers.
Or to stifle that desire, for the comfort of others.
so they might not leave me
so they might think they understand me
so they might even love me, and stay.
so I might be here, right now,
and not be alone.
I must have made that choice.
That being true to myself comes above all else.
And coming with that, that I choose to be alone
and live the life of a loner, a misunderstood flame
lost in my head, and diminishing the needs of my heart.
Or it must be the case, that finding someone else
that might love this about me, is an impossible task.
Either way, the outcome is the same.
I must have made that choice,
because here I am, in the middle of my life,
In the darkness of the evening,
In the quiet space of an apartment empty of others
Wanting so badly to discuss ideas, the wonders
of the universe, of people, and everything in between,
But the realization hits hard, and briefly,
because I will soon start thinking again.
But in this brief moment, I must recognize.
That I am always alone.
Suggested Citation:
Sochat, Vanessa. "Alone." @vsoch (blog), 08 Mar 2024, https://vsoch.github.io/2024/alone/ (accessed 28 Nov 24).