Loneliness

Loneliness has nothing to do with being alone.
It has to do with being unattached to anyone or anything; to be left adrift in the sea of humanity.
Loneliness, a feeling nearly everyone experiences at some point, is the lone survivor of a shipwreck being set adrift on an infinite ocean. Alone, in a life raft. With every other person in the world in their own liferafts all around you.
Each boat is its own little bubble and each person is in their own struggle for survival.
Some people lash their boats to others in an effort to lighten their solitude while others suffer in silence.
Some seek the warmth of their companions but are shunned and disbarred from any relief.

Others, still, experience the sounds of those around them as a driving force: pushing them into insanity.

We're all alone in the world, all alone together.

Despite the permanence of loneliness having the loneliness accentuated by others is never a pleasant experience.

Seeing those whom you recognize and choose to call out to shunning you is always painful.
Seeing them group and bond at your own exclusion exacerbates the isolation of your singular craft.

Groups come and go; friendships grow and fade.

Watching the waning of a friendship is never easy; realizing that it was false is harder still.

The world is an unfriendly place and the friendly people within it can be as unintentionally cruel as those who deliberately inflict harm.

The cascade of ships drifting on the infinite sea is the best that we can hope for and, yet, it amounts to nothing in the span of time that is our lives. Our lives, in turn, are nothing to the time of society.

Our loneliness, each of us, is a tiny morsel of pain in the vast ocean of feeling and, yet, it controls everything about our lives.