Shades of Blue: A Lament of My Heart's Trials

The horizon, once ablaze with the fervor of day, is now gently extinguished, fading into a serene indigo abyss; the sky dons a cloak of darkened blues that hide between the silhouettes of woven tree branches. Together with the melancholy songs in the background, it paints familiar feelings of loneliness.

The lonely heart etches my mind like a virus, softly drowning prior thoughts into a hidden stream of consciousness. I've been dining with loneliness for the past months. She has this way of stealing my sense of peace, turning moments of solitude into a haunting echo of what is absent, a lingering void that pervades the spirit. She initially came to me as a result of a broken heart from a lover, which naturally transitioned into a broken heart with life. She invited me to question my beliefs and myself with a quiet and gentle sense of horror. Weeping at her feet, I felt lost and unable to grasp the simpler things of life.

With ease, loneliness held my hand and guided me into a house of pain that extended deeper and deeper into a cave holding shadows of past versions of myself. For weeks, this abysmal cave transformed into a space that allowed me to gracefully dance with each tormenting shadow. Each one pierced further into my heart, shattering more beliefs. Without control, I felt like I internally fell to my knees above shards of myself, leaving me wounded but not incapacitated. The mere ability to stand up again has always been the faint sound of God that echoes beyond all chambers of my ever-beating heart.

Simultaneously, I feel myself desperately trying to swallow back elephant-shaped teardrops and a deeply vibrating laugh trying to emerge from my diaphragm into the space before me; God is laughing. God is laughing safety nets at my lonely-ridden heart encased with a carcass of pain. God is also laughing at the beauty and elusive dance between myself and loneliness; she is stunningly poisonous—she is the temptress of darkness—she is me when I cannot be alone with myself. When the grace of God allows me to see my reflection, I am able to peel back the armoured suit of layers of masks I wear by myself—for myself—that aren’t the essential self.

When I am seated at the ill-shaped vanity of mirages, visionary lenses fall away to show me, not with loneliness, but standing alone. The difference between being lonely and being alone is stark—one is a silent companion, the other, an oppressive shadow. Alone, I find solace in the quietude, a chance to commune with my inner self. There is no dance to be made, no layer to remove, no pain to feel quivering down my spine. To be alone is to be at rest, floating in the shades of blue.