Tell Me, What Does It Feel Like To Be Lonely?

• Kathy Doan, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2018

Tell me, what does it feel like to be lonely?
It feels like you’re choking on seawater, the water filling your lungs. You’re drowning, yet no one is there to save you. You try to push yourself up, gasping for the slightest of air. Anything so you won’t drown in the sea of your own thoughts.
It feels like you’re the only one sailing on a boat at sea, that just floats endlessly with no set journey. But the sea only gets madder as the waves threaten to eat you alive. Swallow you whole as you stare dumbly at the monster, letting it do whatever it pleases. The fight you once had is gone.
It feels like when you say bye, but no one replies.
It feels like when you plant a seedling, hoping for it to one day to bloom a flower that will unmatch everything else on earth. But it was crushed before it had a chance to grow, squashed and smothered by the bottom of someone’s foot.
It feels like you’re laying in a field of grass at night as you stare up at a starless night sky. It feels strangely empty. You accept this feeling, wallowing in a sad silence, knowing that it must be pathetic.
It feels like you’re trapped in a room while a ferocious storm rages on the outside. You’re trapped in a dark room where there’s no exit, no way out of Hell. So you cry and cry, until your eyes become swollen and a crimson hue. You know that no one hears you, no one at all. And that is what hurts even more.
It feels like chasing something that is so close yet so far away. It’s like someone is dangling it on a stick, enticing you with its soothing words. You know it’s a trap, yet you blindly follow it, hoping that you’re wrong.
You stand alone in this world, as alone as the sun that rises and falls. You face the bitter pain and rejection of this lonely world you inhabit because you know no one will understand. Yet you plead for someone, anyone, to pull you out of this dark hole where your fears chew you up and spit you out and the feeling of happiness is just a lingering memory.
This is what it feels like to be lonely.
So tell me, what does it feel like to be happy?