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What does loneliness feel like to you?

To me, loneliness feels like I’m standing on a stage in a huge auditorium. The curtains are drawn back and I’m standing in the blinding spotlight looking out over the audience. The rest of the auditorium is dark and as I go about my carefully practiced monologue I notice that the darkness in the auditorium is so still and silent. There’s no shuffling of feet or bodies as people try to get comfortable, no coughs or whispers, no stirring at all. The only sound is the echo of my own voice as it projects out to the walls and bounces back at me. As my monologue comes to an end and I prepare for the others to join me on the stage, I look nervously at the stage entrances and realize no one is standing ready to come on. There’s only me and that spotlight. Anxiety creeps in and I start to improvise to buy time. Someone will come eventually, right? The longer I stand in the hot, blaring lights, the more anxious I become. I shouldn’t be on center stage this long. My pristine monologue has long since disintegrated into a garbled mess of melodramatic self-loathing. I want that heat to just melt me away into the floorboards of the stage. My voice is ringing all throughout the auditorium and the echo gets louder. And louder. So loud I want to clutch my ears with my hands and drown out the noise. My mind is crying, Please close the curtains! But nothing budges. A continuous onslaught of noise and stillness.

That’s what loneliness feels like to me.

And finally, when the door to the auditorium swings open, the echoes of my own voice dissipate and the lights switch on, washing over the audience of empty chairs. Someone stands opposite of me at the back of the auditorium and asks, “What are you doing?”