Through the Fog

Category: loneliness

  • Alone

    Photo by Noah Silliman

    I know how to be alone.

    Maybe too well.

    I know how to fill a room

    with noise

    so I don’t notice

    there’s nobody in it.

    How to leave the television on

    just to hear another voice.

    How to stare at my phone

    without actually having

    anyone I want to call.

    I’ve learned

    that loneliness

    isn’t always about

    having no one.

    Sometimes

    it’s lying beside someone

    and feeling miles away.

    Sometimes

    it’s being surrounded

    by people who know your name

    but don’t know

    what’s happening inside you.

    Sometimes

    it’s realizing

    you’ve spent so much time

    making yourself easy

    for everyone else to handle

    that nobody knows

    the difficult parts of you

    at all.

    And maybe that’s why

    being alone hurts differently now.

    Because when everything

    gets quiet,

    there’s no performance.

    No smile to hold up.

    No conversation

    to hide inside.

    Just me.

    And all the things

    I’ve been avoiding.

    The regrets.

    The people I miss

    but shouldn’t reach for.

    The life I thought

    I’d have by now.

    The version of myself

    I keep trying

    to find my way back to.

    Some nights

    the silence feels peaceful.

    Other nights

    it feels like proof

    that everyone eventually leaves.

    I’m still learning

    the difference.

    Still learning

    that solitude

    isn’t rejection.

    That an empty room

    doesn’t mean

    I’m unwanted.

    That being alone

    doesn’t have to mean

    I’ve been abandoned.

    Maybe there is something

    to be found here.

    In the quiet.

    In finally hearing

    my own voice

    without everyone else’s

    mixed into it.

    Maybe I spent so long

    being terrified

    of ending up alone

    that I never considered

    I might need

    to meet myself there.

    So tonight

    I’ll sit with the silence.

    Not pretending

    it doesn’t hurt.

    Not pretending

    I don’t wish

    someone were here.

    Just reminding myself—

    alone

    and unloved

    were never

    the same thing.

  • For the Very First Time

    I feel so alone

    for the very first time—

    not the quiet kind of lonely,

    but the hollow kind,

    the kind that echoes

    when I breathe.

    I feel like I’m letting go,

    like something inside me

    has slipped through my fingers

    while I wasn’t looking.

    Every little thing

    feels heavier than it should—

    like I’m carrying a sky

    that forgot how to hold itself.

    And fear…

    fear has come to stay.

    Not as a visitor,

    but as a shadow

    curling around my feet,

    following me from room to room

    as if it knows

    I’m too tired to fight it tonight.

    But even in this quiet collapse,

    even in this trembling place,

    some small part of me

    is still reaching—

    for light,

    for warmth,

    for anything that reminds me

    I don’t have to face this alone.

  • Unread

    The room is quiet

    in the way empty places breathe—

    soft, patient,

    like they already know

    no one is coming.

    Your name glows

    on the dark screen in my hands,

    a small white light

    that promises nothing.

    I tell myself

    silence doesn’t mean absence.

    That people have lives

    beyond the reach of my fears.

    But loneliness

    is a skilled storyteller.

    It takes a single unanswered message

    and builds a whole ending from it—

    a story where I was too much,

    or not enough,

    or simply forgettable.

    The minutes stretch thin.

    The night settles deeper.

    Across the room

    an empty chair waits

    like someone once meant to sit there.

    And I wonder

    how something so small—

    a pause,

    a delay,

    a quiet space between words—

    can echo so loudly

    in a heart

    that’s still learning

    how to believe

    someone might stay.