Alone Or Lonely

I was raised in a family of seven. I grew up in a neighborhood rich

with kids with whom I shared memorable experiences of exploration, sharing, learning and friendship. I had two sets of grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins galore that I shared some of my fondest memories with. I went on into Junior High School, High School and College establishing strong bonds of friendship as I progressed. As I traveled through the different stages of my life, I was always fortunate to be able to participate in sporting activities and always felt good about being a part of a team. Even though I was extremely shy around girls, I always felt at ease when I had a girlfriend and even at a young age felt good about having someone in which to share my affections and learn about the intricacies of love.

Then in 1971 everything changed. I began to make a series of decisions that would prove to change my life and at the time, I wasn't sure they were for the better. I dropped out of college about one semester shy of graduating; I no longer had a soul mate; I went to work for the Santa Fe Railroad. All of a sudden it didn't seem to matter how popular or unpopular I had been in the past, who or how many great friends I had in the past, who my family was, or how accomplished I had been in sports or any other activity. It was a great job with a terrific company and I was making more money than I had ever seen before. But, there was something else that came with my new life...... emptiness.

This emptiness was new to me. It wasn't that I was alone, because I was surrounded by people. I was lonely. I had lost touch with most of my old friends. Even my family seemed to drift away as my younger brothers had moved on in new directions and activities taking Mom and Pop with them. And, because I had drifted from them, I also seemed to lose the closeness with my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. It seemed that all the things that I had done and family and friends that I had loved in my first twenty-one years of existence didn't matter anymore.

I poured myself into work trying to ignore the emptiness within. But work only absorbed about a third to half of my time. I turned to what I thought was the thing to do..... Party Time!! I was working in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area so this young country boy was going to see the sights and leave all them old memories behind. I did meet some interesting people and made some new friends, I just can't remember most of their names. Everybody seemed to be having a good time as was I, I just never got used to that horrible morning after feeling. It wasn't only the physical reaction to the random consumptions of the night before, it was also the desperation of trying to sort out how much of what I remember actually happened the night before. Then deciding that it probably wouldn't matter because I more than likely wouldn't ever see them again anyway.

I would return home every once in a while only to discover that things had changed. The house was different, the town was different and my family was different. Nobody was doing the things that we used to do. I would return home in hopes of finding all the things that I had been missing, only to find that very little was the same. Now the thing that I was trying to escape was at its worst in the place that I had felt the most comfort....home. So, I worked harder and longer hours and in doing so I made more money. With that money, I tried my best to have a good time and be happy. My problem was that I was building very few quality memories and most weren't worthy of remembering. At one time I had an apartment in Cleburne, an apartment in Dallas, a room in Oklahoma and I even had an apartment in Brownwood all at the same time. So, you couldn't say I didn't have a home, I had four of them. But like my heart, most of the time they were empty.

Then one stormy night I met a girl completely by chance at a friend's house. She was nothing like the people I had been spending time with for several years and even more unusual, I was sober, well, almost sober. When she said she needed to go home, I asked if I could give her a ride, being that the weather was so bad. She reluctantly agreed to the ride. As I took her home, I realized that she was part of the world that I thought no longer existed. I was impressed not only by her beauty and her smile, but her quiet demeanor and the complete absence of any false illusions. She was exactly who she appeared to be. As I walked her to her door, I did something that I hadn't done in years, I asked her if she would like to go to the movies sometime. She said yes and I felt like the shy teenager I had been a hundred years before.

That was over forty-one years ago and even though Amber never asked me to change, I slowly returned to the real world, the world I thought had abandoned me, the world I had missed so terribly. I could go on and on about the love of my life, the soul and foundation of all that is me, but that is for another time. For now I will reminisce about how I was lost and then was found. I had taken a dreadful detour in my life, but I was fortunate that a Higher Power and his sweet angel guided me back to a place of warmth and acceptance, a place where I would be lonely no more.

I learned that you don't have to be alone to be lonely. To be alone with yourself and your memories can be a good thing. To be lonely is never good. I found that I didn't handle lonely very well. I now know that your family and your true friends can always be so, unless you abandon their memory and love. I learned that things change and it may seem too much if you weren't there to see them change, but change is not always bad and it certainly isn't a conspiracy. Being friendly is not the same as being a friend. Just because someone is friendly toward you doesn't make them a friend; true friendship has something to do with the heart.

I have lost family and I have lost friends and it breaks my heart that they are not with me now to share all that is good. I have learned that even with their loss I am not lonely, for I have the company and comfort of their wonderful memories and the satisfaction that I came home before they left and that our souls have been and will forever be together. May we always have the strength, warmth and love of our families and our friends and may we never be lonely again.