Sometimes I feel so alone. Like when I’m standing in the middle of a moment and realize that regardless of the externals, this is all there is. It makes me anxious.

My loneliness is a non-binary state. It exists in various forms in a multitude of situations. Like my happiness, joy, sadness, grief, confidence, compassion and contentment, loneliness comes in the oddest of moments, and though it rarely stays for long, I accept the role it plays in my life. This anxious lonely feeling has been with me since early childhood. But loneliness is a part of everyone’s life. We all feel it. If one cannot acknowledge it’s existence, then denial is playing an all too powerful role.

I sometimes wonder if people don’t find themselves ensconced in unfulfilling relationships because of their loneliness. I once thought that a partner would quell this unease but my choice of mate only intensified the feeling. When my parents died, when I was faced with adversity, when I needed someone to lean on or care for me, I was unable to get what I needed. What I learned was that not everyone is capable of giving me everything I need, and that loneliness is increased by lack of support.

You know how most people have a first memory? I have that too but it comes with a feeling. I was about two years old living with a family who wanted to adopt me as their second child. In this memory I am laying on my stomach on a lush green lawn trying to catch a grasshopper in a metal Band-Aid box circa 1964. In that moment I remember feeling alone. All alone. Lonely yes but in some weird primal acceptance of being quite alone in this world. The awareness of knowing that I was there in that place with those people feeling unloved, disappointing and alone. A two year old child. They gave me back into the system a few weeks later. I was not the model of little boy they wanted. My happy ending ensued shortly after, but that first feeling of loneliness has never abated. This would be my deepest fucked up shit.

There are currently three people in my life who truly, deeply love and accept me. Of these three, Sarah anchors me to this planet. She holds my hand, reads my mind and bullies her way (if need be) into any situation where I turn away from the world and stand alone. Sarah has taught me that having a best friend means that someone is there and okay with my loneliness. Not trying to fix me or change me, only to sit there in those moments, alone together keeping company. She preternaturally gives me what I don’t even know I need.

Recently Sarah got married. When she first brought Silas around I realized this guy was on track. He was a fit. A match. I watched Sarah slowly become for him what she has always been for me. Only this was different. And the love they share together has never diminished or dimmed our relationship. In fact, it reenforces our friendship. While Silas and Sarah are natural allies, companions and whatever else their private life may be, Sarah has carved out a space for loving us both. It’s difficult to explain really, but to know them both is to understand.

She pulled together the wedding in about five weeks. Realizing that what they have together, who they are as individuals and how they show up in the world would dictate this event, they simply and beautifully got on with it. I don’t really enjoy going to weedings. To anyone who has ever invited me to their big, beautiful, grand wedding I apologize. This one I actually enjoyed. It was blissfully simple and small. Twenty of us saw them married. We ate cake and pie, enjoyed a relaxed dinner of lasagne and fried chicken at the Hungry Pigeon, and I was still home and tucked in by 10:30 PM.

Last time I was at the Hungry Pigeon for dinner I was on a Tinder date. A fact I should not have mentioned to Silas’ Aunt Margaret. You know how a person begins a sentence by saying “I don’t mean to be offensive by saying this”? You brace yourself to feel some way you might not thoroughly enjoy. I liked Margaret but she struck me as a slightly pugilistic contrarian who likes to poke holes. Can’t say I haven’t been a version of that person. Aunt Margaret had strong opinions on app dating that she wanted to share through a barrage of judgy questions. Her romantic notions do not include algorithms. In fact her appalled look regarding the matter really said it all, but then she said more. I wasn’t really offended. Besides, the guy she married is still smoking hot at sixty so her old fashioned notions of romantic love left me dubious about her lack of lustful memories regarding their courtship. Acting as if she had been floated to her wedding chapel like the last of the Vestal Virgins on a boat to Pompeii. “No one” she declared, “could find real love through a dating app. Or by sleeping around”. Being the dick I can sometimes be, I flippantly (and not completely incorrectly) stated that I am an old-fashioned gay, that I like to bed a guy first before I decide if I want to date him. So regardless of anything said that night at the table, technically I did fire the first shot.

I’ve heard it said that we attract who we are, not who we desire. If that’s the case then my kinship with Sarah proves there is still a great deal for me to look forward to, and that while I might sometimes feel lonely, I am never truly alone.