Somewhat lonely...

Thinking back and looking at the pictures from the past couple of days, it was really a short trip, and overall a little more bitter than sweet. Seeing my friend get married, and seeing another who is about to do the same, it felt like I’m losing my friends to married life, which makes my life as a singleton seem more ridiculous and desperate. I mean, there are just things you can’t really say or do to a friend who is with someone else already, so at times I felt I had to ‘hold myself back’. One thing that popped into my mind while I was walking and traveling around, even just briefly, was: find new (single) friends!

Or at least find a boyfriend, soon…

(Plattesteen mural)

I went to Soho (the gay area) while I was in London and sat around in Starbucks there for a while. I’m not really a fan of modern and chain stores, but this particular Starbucks was one I used to go to almost every week to drink and read quietly alone, or meet friends and chat in. All I did was look out the window, sipping my hot chocolate. All sorts of people walked by, and that was all they did. It’s been a while since I went out at night, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think (or hope) ‘maybe something’s going to happen tonight…’A number of (gay) couples sat around, chatting softly, holding hands. I just sat there and passed the night away. There were many other pubs and bars around the streets in Soho, but I didn’t go. The crowd seemed so (much) old(er), and the mood was the kind in cruising places oozing with sexual tension that I felt more intimidated than welcomed, even just passing by the door.

Nothing happened. And I just went home late, walking down the river bank again. But to be honest that night I had the most intense erotic dream for a long time, and my ex was in it. It was really real, I felt myself even groaning in sleep, and woke up with a stiff…

...neck from the way I was lying all over the bed. I usually don’t move much and curl my legs up to sleep, but that night was somehow different.

Funny thing was, as I was walking around in Brussels, I accidentally stumbled into the gay district in Plattesteen (‘Flatstone’). There were so many bars and clubs there, and all these rainbow flags hanging on the buildings. But since it was daytime, it was very empty. Not that I’d have the courage to go into those bars alone had it been night time, but just the thought of, of being somewhere where so many other ‘like-minded people’ frequent made the place feel ‘homey’.
(Gay district in Brussels)

Hm, to be honest, the last couple of days I felt really lonely, more so than usual when I travel by myself. I mean I’ve made so many trips all over the place in the past year, but this one especially, perhaps seeing my friends as they are now, made the loneliness feel more intense. And walking around it felt like I was a wanderer, trying to fit in, trying to pretend I was part of the many who live and work in the city, or a simple tourist who came and went without second thoughts. But I was neither…I was something else in between, lost between someone who was seeing things for the first time, but at the same time seeing things that brought back memories. Worse still, by the lingering and nagging feeling that I’m in search of something, or someone, to hold onto, but still unsure what, or who, it is that I’m searching for. Hopes really, dreams mostly, imaginations more often than not accompany me wherever I went, and they seem to tease, provoke and mock the depths of my emotions, yearnings and desires. But soon enough those fantasies vanish as I turn another corner, as I continue to walk and wander, as if they never existed.

As if I and those people and places were never there.