I am a lost and lonely. Today I walked the halls of this house in the dark, trying to understand who I have become. I’ve already lost this place to live. It is no longer mine. And yet here I am, inhabiting it for a few precious days more. How long, I don’t know. I only know that already I do not feel safe here because it is already lost to me. I am already making mental lists of what I will have to leave behind, what I will need to take with me and what I will attempt to let go of. It is an awful thing to have to abandon one’s possessions. To decide what will stay and what will go. And at those times you question everything. Who you are without them, what they meant to you in the first place, what place they could possibly have had in your life if in a heartbeat you can so easily leave them forever, never to look upon them again.

I’m no stranger to it. I had to do it once before, long ago. I left the most precious of things behind. And the memory of that last day still haunts me. Of driving away, of not looking back, of the terror of what lay ahead.

And here I am again. Having to leave where I live. I sat down on the couch to read a book and realized this is the last time I will be able to do this, the last time I will have peace and solitude and privacy. Probably for a long time. And already I feel suffocated, as if I will have to watch every step I take from now on because people will be watching me. Where I’m going is a public place and as such I will have no claim on it. When will I relax? When will I be able to shut my mind off if everything Ii do will be scrutinized? I can hardly stand it.

And yet, I have no choice because this is what my life has become. And I blame no one but myself. I am ashamed of what I’ve become. The long walk back will be so long, so painful and so slow. But most of all it will be lonely. Because no one can share this with me. There will be no one alongside me to give me strength, to hold my hand. I have relied on the company of others for so long I do not think I can do this alone.

I am astonished at how incapable I am at dealing with life; how the smallest of things terrify me and make me want to run and hide.. How is it possible to have lived this long without realizing this very basic fact about myself? Imagine being thrown into the middle of an arena where you will be forced to face the thing that terrifies you the most. That is how I feel, for surely that is what is in store. for me. I put on a brave face when really I want to howl at the heavens for a rescue.

I can barely stand this.