For someone who spent most of her childhood playing in an empty house, you would think she would be well associated with Loneliness. But to me, loneliness is so foreign. In my sixteen years, I've only truly felt loneliness a few times. One such day was a Christmas eve, alone with my brand new electric guitar that lost its glitz in the empty house.

Today, I suddenly noted the empty musk of the house, the voids in the rooms behind closed doors, my bedsheets indented with creases and lit with dying sunlight, my room showered in sudden half-darkness as the sun goes down. And I can suddenly remember so many times, how I sat in the corner by the window, watching the houses below and their occupants go about their lives. Watch the birds fly, the sun rise, then the white and lilac wisps of clouds as the sun dipped into night out of view. Cried in that corner, laughed in that corner, even prayed in that corner as a child, experimenting with a God I heard of, but did not know, lighting a hope of getting to know someone good.

All those moments of solitude, of peace, was spent in that corner, with my hands in the dark and my eyes to the dying light. But nowadays, when instinct brings me back, I no longer see the world, but see myself - self-pity, self-torture, self-absorbed. My eyes are open, but the senses are shut to the world, and I realised that this, all this, began right at the moment I declared my battle against introversion. Some part of me collapsed in fear of being revealed. And the chain of events echoed.

What am I doing wrong? How can I be free?


Perhaps, I am doing something right. These pangs of loneliness are the cost - painful reminders of how dependent on the world I actually am.

Openness. How much is enough, and how much is too much?


I think I will listen to some emo music, and turn on some lights.