New Years Day 2023 ... lunchtime 

Hmmm. I wrote long blog on New Year's Eve morning but then i don't know whether to post it or not and i guess that tells me it is better left as a draft, a personal record. I have stepped in to 2023 feeling wobbly. I think as with Christmas it is deep loneliness that is hitting me. The kind of loneliness that can't quickly be cured, that sometimes i think i have got on top of, but when it presents itself i realise that probably i was just covering and that feeling alone is a hard and fast part of my being. Sometimes feeling alone feels like blissful solitude and truthfully being alone is one the best cures for feeling alone for me. In solitude i meet the world outside of humanity, and i am able too to wander within. But sometimes, as today and maybe for quite a while, being alone hasn't felt comfortable.

For the greater part of my life i have stood alone. I did not feel loved in childhood. I do not know if i was loved all i can say is that i did not feel loved. I saw my sisters getting positive affirmation but it didn't seem to come my way. This i think is the root of my solitary nature and also my falling sometimes into the horrible loneliness i have been feeling since late September. I wonder if the feeling of being unloved and unlovable as a child damns a person to a lifetime of uncertainty about their worth. 

When i am subject to this isolation, that comes from both within and without, i have to summon on my inner strength to smile and get on with life. It is hard to speak to people when loneliness is overwhelming, life becomes more performative which increases the sense of isolation because behind the smile and the mask worn to make myself socially acceptable i am quietly dying because i don't know how to ask for help.

How do i move through my current set-apart feeling ? How do i find comfort within intractable set ups to which i belong that exacerbate my feeling of isolation ? Is it possible to belong without belonging. The need to belong is an animal need in me and i wonder if this blog is a howl to the moon as the days now start to lengthen and move towards Spring. A call to meet. 

Perhaps I stop at that. At that h-owl. Happy New Year my pack.