You can live with loneliness, if you live for long enough. But first you have to break through that spell where loneliness is the pair of tights you ladder first thing in the morning when you’re still half-asleep, the coat you shrug on before you step out into the world’s familiar chill, or the blanket you pull tight around you when it’s been two hours and you’re still not asleep. Because that is not loneliness: that is fear of loneliness.
Loneliness becomes you. You wear it like skin, so accustomed to it that when you look in the mirror each day, you are not surprised to see it. You know it, every square inch of it: its temperature, the way it stretches across your bones as you reach out an arm, or folds in on itself as you pull an arm away. You protect it, and panic at the sight of blood, that some alien vessel has dared to infiltrate you. True loneliness is easily accepted, as I had accepted mine.
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