Specific types of loneliness.

Getting lost in the local supermarket of the place you recently moved to. Searching for something for twenty minutes realising it's not where it would have been in your old local supermarket. Standing in the aisle for a moment, frozen, feeling a pang of loneliness.

Watching couples carry their christmas tree home.

Looking into illuminated windows at 5 pm in November, watching other peoples lives from the outside.

These words from Nadia Owusos book 'Aftershocks' popped into my head today…

‘The idea of roots setting a person free is counterintuitive, but deracination from the past, from land, from family, from mothers, makes for an unstable present. We must have, or we will always search for, a place to bury our bones.’

Thinking of my 27 year old self - she was only interested in flying, flying, flying.

I feel for her. I think part of her wasn't flying to explore - part of her was flying to look for a place to land, but she wouldn't admit it.

“I ached for lasting connection, for a place where rejection was not inevitable. No matter how many times I stood on bare floors, surrounded by blank walls, telling myself I belonged everywhere and to everywhere, emptied houses never stopped feeling like ruin.”

I have long stopped telling myself I belong anywhere and that I don't care and that I'm cool with that. I'm not. I'm warm and I care and I want to belong to somewhere real. I don't want anymore empty walls and blank floors.
I want walls full of stories and floors that bend under the weight of a full life.