There's a difference between being alone and being by yourself. Being by yourself is often a good thing. I like spending time by myself. I grew up on a farm, the only kid my age for miles, and not able to do all of the things my family did (they never trusted me alone with a tractor!). So I learned to enjoy being by myself. But I was never alone, I had the support of family.
then my parents encouraged me to take up Ham Radio, hoping I could meet more people that way. So, though I was still often by myself, I was never alone.
But being alone is an entirely different matter. Alone is what my ex-fiancée was. She pushed everyone away, and she had been dead for a week before anyone found her. That's alone.
I'm sitting here in my office, knowing I should get some of this stupid math course done. But I am feeling very, very alone tonight, for some reason. It's not pleasant, certainly nobody's to blame, I just feel very alone, very very alone.
I think of what it must be like to be in a relationship, to have the knowledge of that other person's presence with you at all times, even if that presence isn't physical. My parents had that. I know many other couples who do. I never had it with Tammy. As often as not, I was looking for ways to get out of going to see her or having her come over to see me, I was looking for ways to avoid contact ... I was looking for a way out almost before I was in, is what it comes down to. My friends hated her, my family hated her, and I only continued to love her for as long as I did out of sheer determination. There was never a bond of any kind between us, aside from maybe the first week or two. Ours was a relationship of threatened and perpetrated violence on her part, of coersion, of abuse. I'll never let that happen to me again. I want the kind of relationship my parents had, where at the end, the only fitting words my dad could say to my mom were, "It's been good ... all these years ... it's been good." Mom and Dad were never alone, they had each other, even when they weren't physically there. And that, bringing things back to my topic of rambling, is what I want.
As Christians, we're taught that God should fill the voids in our lives. And while I subscribe to this wholeheartedly, God also said that it wasn't right for man to be alone. The Bible, as I do, makes the distinction between being by yourself and being alone. The former is very often a good thing. The latter never is.
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