I don’t know where this boat is going. The faint whispers of the water leave my heart drifting, seeking to understand. The sky is loud with emptiness inside. It screams, “You will always be alone!”  It’s all red and pink above me, covering the blue sky with its rage.  It spills my emotions across the sky, hovering over me like the clouds.

The air suffocates me with the loneliness of my soul. I sit under the white sail and pull my knees up to my chest, trying to make myself smaller. Maybe if I shrink, the hurt will shrink, too. The ocean is filled with tears as I weep.

I left the shore because I could not bear one more minute of watching everyone else having someone to love and share their lives with. The joy in their faces and the sparkle in their eyes. My eyes are swollen from the cries of my heart. I thought if I got far enough away, maybe the emptiness would be left behind, and I would find solace within me.

But it didn’t. It climbed into my boat with me, the weight almost sinking my safety to the bottom of the ocean. It sits beside me like a ghost who never makes a sound. Loneliness is not just a feeling. It’s my state of mind, getting stronger as the days go by. I think to myself, “Will it always be this way?”

I fear the ocean is going to swallow me whole. Out here, I don’t exist. I am living life, lost in the waters. I am in the middle of forever. No one knows that I am gone. No one knows my name. I don’t have a place in anyone’s heart. I am not one with anyone’s soul. I tried to picture another boat in the distance. Another presence of love that I can call my own. Someone waving and saying, “I see you!” But my hope fades like the breeze. The breeze dies like my heart.

I am still here, quiet and small, listening to the creek of the wood on which I sit and the slow breath of the water pushing me further into the void of loneliness. The worst part is not that I will drown. The worst part is that I won’t. That I will just float in despair, day after day, with no hope of connection. I will forever live in loneliness, and my existence will never be met with love.

It’s just me, the boat, the endless water, and the feeling of being forgotten. Somewhere back on the shore, in the business of life, there lives a heart that longs for someone else, leaving me as an invisible presence that longs for her to see me. Her heart cries with emptiness whose void I cannot fill. I try not to think about it, but the truth pushes its way into my head with a sharp, harsh pain in my heart.

I press my hand flat against my wooden seat. It’s the only solid thing that I have. The sky keeps changing colors, but it doesn’t change its thoughts about me, lost and alone, far away from shore. I ask the ocean, “Will I ever find love?”  It doesn’t answer.  It just carries me slowly further into the sea of isolation, and I fear that this is all I ever will have.