Four Years / Natural

October 16th, 2024

If you feel a little lonely, you’re not alone in that, and it’s natural to feel.

My mom made sure I knew that.

She’s been gone four years today.

My dad got married last weekend. It was a beautiful day. I was the minister of their wedding. I got a lot of questions about my part in it, but the one I got most was: why?

It’s a great question. Sharp. To the point.

And I thought the answer was complicated, but it’s not.

When I was growing up, my mom would check in on me frequently and ask me specifically if I was feeling lonely. I’ve wondered why and I think it’s because being alone was one of her fears. Like funny people who make you laugh because they don’t want you to feel the same desperate way they do inside, I think a lot of what we say and do is to defend ourselves against the shadows that are stitched to our feet.

She wanted me to know that even if I felt lonely, it was okay. It’s a thing that everybody feels. But if I am feeling it, she wanted to remind me that she was here. That I’m not really ever alone.

Something that I really focus on with my sobriety is the idea that I never want to be the reason that somebody else fails. I want to give what I can, offer my tools, do anything within my power to help others succeed.

I gave my blessing and was the minister at my dad’s wedding because my mom told us that we should never be alone. She reminded me to give what I could, offer my services, and use my power to generate connection and joy. She insisted on hugs and games and the dirtiest jokes you’ve never heard. (That was a deaf joke, in her honor.)

If you feel a little lonely, you’re not alone. It’s as natural as the unnatural feeling that surfaces when someone we love disappears. We owe it to ourselves to hold those feelings up to the light and examine them. To check in with the people we love who carry them. And to not stop the cycle of feelings, the ones that grow after we allow the soil to restore itself, the happiness and laughter and strength we thought we had lost forever.

Everything grows back. It’s all totally natural.