Void

I sat some distance away from friends I was with. I needed a few moments alone. Alone with my thoughts, moments to shut away the laughs and smiles and to recollect myself and events of the past five years. 

It's five years to the day since I arrived in Canada. Such a foreign country it was back then, so vast, so unexplored... And now? There's so much more to discover... So much more. So much more to see...

I looked into the horizon , at the sun about to set over the pacific. I looked back at my friends who sat some distance away. They have been two people who enriched my life in the past five years in different ways. I smiled at them and thanked them silently... They looked and appeared to be so far away. 

I looked again at the horizon, at the vast and endless horizon. Despite the feelings of gratitude having been in this country for so long, I felt this sudden pang of loneliness and insecurity. What am I doing now, five years on? What have I done in five years? Did it matter at all? How have I changed the world or the lives of those around me? 

My thoughts could not help it but drift to mum and dad, whose remains now lay across the Pacific... If they could see me now... If they could see their child now, sitting alone on a log on a beach watch ing the sun set, temporarily lost in thought, perpetually lost in life and searching for a sense of direction and belonging... What disgrace!

I closed my eyes and breathed in heavily. I could smell the ocean, hear the gentle waves as they broke on the shoreline. I  could not really fight it. That urge to speak to my parents, that urge to speak my mind, unleash the thoughts that I really cannot tell anyone because nobody can really ever understand or care to understand. I closed my eyes and imagined the feel of the  touch of someone who can show me again what love is, and what it is to love and be loved in return... Feelings i've longed for since a child... Feelings I've longed for since those terrible dark days of abuse and being demeaned and treated like I am not worth anything. The feelings made my skin crawl. Seagulls cried close to me. 

I missed the way mum used to stroke the top of my head, the way dad used to put his hand behind my back when he walked next to me... How comforting those little gestures were.  I miss the way someone could hug me and make me so safe and so very comforted and soothed inside. How I have hardened, it feels like, over the past year, and feel like I have become so misunderstood. How I have stopped sharing, stopped talking, stopped feeling comfortable enough to talk and share. Why talk or share when personal feelings are easily dismissed or unrecognised? 

The sun was fading and losing its warmth. I breathed deep, and clenched the sand I grabbed in my hand. 

felt so aged, and so very, very tired and tested. I missed the care and depth of family ties, longed for a lover's touch, and real passion and intimacy. The setting sun made that feeling of isolation loneliness, that longing for company, for belonging, for family, even stronger. 

Five years in Canada. I have so much, so much. how ungrateful i must sound like, how whiny and so unappreciative of all that I have, for I have it so easy not to have to worry too much about food or shelter or clothing or finances. But I feel so empty inside.  I feel so very empty inside. 

The void hurts and is frustrated and angry, unpredictable and impatient. it is breaking me little by little.  

I look forward to being lifted up and energised again...