Alone and Lonely

To be alone is to be physically separated from everyone. To be lonely is to be emotionally separated from everyone. Often being alone causes loneliness. One can be in a group of thousands and be lonely. One can be isolated from everyone and everything and not be lonely.

I fear both. My greatest fear is to be cut off from all mankind. To be isolated from everyone and everything. To be separated from all I hold dear. To be truly and completely alone in both body and soul is the worst thing I could imagine. Even to be in the company of a human "enemy" would be better than to be alone.

Loneliness I feel often, so I do not fear it as much as being isolated from everyone. But both would be horrible. I do not think I could live.

I could not stand to grow up, live in my own house away from everyone, even work at a job where I only see some people, and then go home to an empty house with no one but myself. To live like that every day, for every day, for the rest of my life, I do not know if I could stand it. Of course, everything becomes bearable by simply living through it. But is that really living? Or just a mechanical motion of the body and mind?

I do not know.