I'm Not Lonely, I'm Loved

Loneliness has got to be one of the worst things a person can experience. It aches and gnaws at your innermost being, not being loved or having anyone to love. I've come to this place many times in my life, and have done many things to try to fill the void. Many of the things I've done to try to find love and friendship I haven't thought about for some time. I don't need to. My life isn't lonely anymore. It's filled with love, with many friends who love me and whom I can love back. It's not always easy, but every day I'm being healed from living years in a lonely, separated society. It's only because of our Master Yahshua that this life of love can be a reality. It hurts now to remember the past, but my desire is that by reading this a spark of hope could be lit in your heart and you could know there's a life of love waiting here for you. You, too, can come out of your lonely, miserable life as I did.

You could say I had an average American childhood with grandparents and relatives living close by. But when I was ten, my parents divorced. Mom, I believe, wanting her own life, moved out. My parents decided it would be best for my younger sister and brother and me to live with my dad, who had a steady job for the past eleven years and more stability than my mom. It was like a nightmare. I kept expecting to wake up and everything would be fine. Lots of other children's parents I knew got divorced — oh, but not my parents. I closed up. I had no one to talk to. I felt empty inside. I wanted and needed my mother like every young girl should. I needed her advice and experience. I needed her to help me grow up, to help me understand life and love and the changes that were to happen as I grew. Since she wasn't there, I had to basically go it alone. I began to drift further and further from everyone at home. They all said I was so quiet and never looked happy.

When I was twelve, my dad was drunk and broke down and told us he wasn't my real father. I didn't know what to think. I already felt like the black sheep of the family and this only helped to justify it. More and more I felt alone. Finding out that I had a different father than my sister and brother, finding out that the grandparents, cousins, etc., I grew up with all my life were not related to me in any way, all this made me feel more alienated than ever. I remember many times my sister and I getting into arguments and her yelling at me to go back to where I came from, that I didn't belong here. I felt like it was me against the world. I had no true blood bond with anyone — only a mother who was gone and a father I had never met.

High school came. I remember dreading lunch time because I knew I would be by myself. I hated the awful feeling of sitting at a table all alone while hundreds of other kids sat together, laughing and talking, just being with each other. I was so lonely, it made me sick.

Time went by and I made a few friends. Then in eleventh grade my opportunity came. My cousin transferred to my school. He made friends instantly and with people I had only admired from a distance — the cool "progressive" (punk) clique. Amazingly, I was accepted by them. I actually felt happy. I hung out with the coolest people in school. I had a new identity, a new look, new friends. I felt accepted.

Not that this cured my loneliness. It was still there; it just didn't hurt as much. Things were pretty good while I was with my friends, but if they weren't there or I had to go to a class without them, there I was again, the same isolated, insecure individual, counting the minutes to the bell when I could meet up with them again.

With this new scene, of course, came the drugs, alcohol and sex. It seems as if this was all we lived for. Our whole purpose and lives were centered around the weekend. I hated being sober because I hated the reality of my life, the reality that I was lonely and miserable and wanted love and affection badly. Being wasted helped me "open up", be friendly, not be so intimidated to talk to or even sleep with people I didn't know very well or had never even met. It made it easier to go against my conscience. So many times I gave myself to someone in the hope of finding love, care, even just a good friend.

I never found these things. How many times I was used, and as time passed, began to use others, as just an instrument of gratification. If only someone would love me. It wasn't only that no one loved me, but I didn't know how to love back. Violating my conscience so many times in such a serious way damaged my ability to form deep relationships. I was shallow and insecure. I was so afraid to open up, to let people see how I really was. I didn't know how to. I wanted so badly to stop going from person to person, but something about being held by another human being conveyed a feeling of not being so lonely, a feeling of love I could not find anywhere else. When the moment was over, though, so was the "love" and loneliness was twisting my heart again. How many times had I given my entire being to someone and the next day have nothing more than a passing "Hi" for each other, or worse, never even seeing one another again. How totally abnormal!

I knew I was absolutely wrong in what I was doing. My conscience screamed at me in drunken emotional depressions where I would grieve and agonize over everything I'd done, feeling so lonely, so desperate, so dirty. Meanwhile all my friends were telling me everything was ok, don't get so upset, it's not that bad, for if they told me the truth, they knew it would hold true for them also.

How I longed for someone to tell me I didn't have to do these things anymore, that they wanted me to be with them, that they loved me for me.

Years went by and eventually I found that person. Actually, He found me. He is the very Son of God and His love washed away every hurt, wound, and tear. I've been forgiven by His blood which was shed to save us from death and have been given a new clean life. He loves us so much! I'm not lonely anymore. I'm loved. He doesn't want you to be lonely either. He loves you too. Please come and see the happiness and love I've found.

~ Heather