The definition of lonely

I'll admit it right here, right now. I am lonely. I am lonely in a way that I can only describe as painfully so. I'm not lonely for company. I've got plenty of friends around. I'm lonely in that lonely way, when you see other people who've found one another, when you see a couple holding hands in the parking lot, when you hear the lilting laughter of a woman giggling at some remark, when you hold the door open for a girl wrapped in the coat of her boyfriend.

Loneliness is a terrible thing. It eats at you constantly. It reminds you that even unhappiness is better sometimes. It's like a sweater that itches, but you can't take it off. Loneliness is what drives a person to go through old letters from crushes and exes, neatly kept in file folders, letters still kept in their original envelopes. Loneliness is what makes you appreciate that a beautiful woman is more than skin deep. Loneliness is what reminds you that life is horrible and cruel because it gives you so much but never enough. Loneliness is what makes you realize that you are so very unhappy with who you are, not because there is anything wrong with you, but because the rest of the world has no appreciation for who you are. Loneliness is what tells you that the most beautiful object in creation is meaningless if you can't share it with someone else.

I am lonely. And with that, a healthy dose of despondent. I don't say depressed because I'm not depressed. I know depression. I could ramble on about depression for quite some time. Depression is not the same thing. Despondent is simply the lack of hope. It's the active realization that there is no hope for the future or the present. Despondency is what tells you that you should be depressed and you should consider putting a bullet in your brain. That's not depression. Depression is thinking that a bullet in your brain would be an improvement.

I think that people have no comprehension of me. I am some sort of enigma or puzzle that is entirely not worth unraveling. I am a Rubix cube that sits in the toy chest unsolved, and undeserving of such effort. I am a pair of white shoes the day after Labor Day. I am khakis at a semi-formal event. I am soft serve ice cream in the middle of winter. I have spent so much time in trying to sell a product that has no market. I'm trying to be a jelly donut, but I'm really a bowl of oatmeal.

And that's why I hate myself really. It's not that there's anything to hate. It's that what is there is so unwanted, that I too do not want it. It's that pecan roll whose only fault in life was being a pecan roll. And it sits, growing stale, in a case full of frosted cinnamon rolls, watching them snatched up with great pleasure. But that poor pecan roll just sits in the case and dries out. And how can it NOT hate itself? Why shouldn't it hate itself, for being something that is so unwanted?