There are many people who spend their lives in a state of loneliness, yet there are so many people who will never truly grasp the idea of what true loneliness is. For me, my loneliness became a poison that crippled me for years. I have spent almost every day of my life completely alone.
Loneliness built up inside of me like a virus, and it got worse everyday until I felt completely drained and like there was nothing else left inside of me. Unlike your normal virus, there as no medication for the loneliness, and it continued to get worse everyday. Really being alone, meant spending everyday of my childhood alone in my room because I didn’t have anybody to spend my time with. I never knew what it was like to go to someone’s house after school, or to go to a sleepover.
At twelve I found myself spending all hours on line talking to men in their thirties. Soon, I decided I wanted to meet one of them, and I did. I met up with him at the mall with a girl from school. I actually allowed myself to get into his car and he molested me. He probably would have kidnapped me, and no doubt killed me, if the girl I brought with me handed realized we were no longer in the arcade with her. She came to his truck screaming vulgarities and dragged me out by my hair. However, I was so lonely that I was unable to realize the danger of the situation I was putting myself in. All I wanted was for someone to want me around.
After this event, my loneliness only further poisoned me. At thirteen I met a man online that was at least nineteen and lost my virginity to him that very day. Although I knew that what I was doing was wrong, I also thought it was cool because an older guy liked me. I continued to be sexually active with him for about a month, until he finally got sick of me and found another venerable little girl. After he left me I found myself in a highly sexual and destructive lifestyle. By the age of seventeen, I had slept with eleven people; all but one would have been considered statutory rape. I never realized until now that most of those men should be in jail. All I was trying to do was to fill the deep void that I felt in my heart, and I thought that I needed a man to do so. However, those men were more toxic than I could possibly ever have imagined.
There was always an abusive boyfriend around, and he was always a few years older than I was. I would never tell my family about the abuse or the sex because if I did, it meant I would lose the only companion I had. Despite the fact that they were horrid, again it didn’t matter, because I just wanted someone, anyone to care. My loneliness stripped me of my self respect and made me a target got monsters and unbelievable sorrow.
At fourteen, I began using cutting as a tool to distract myself from life. The physical pain became a mask for the emotional sorrow I felt all the time. My loneliness had began to cause severe depression and I started getting high off both over the counter and prescription drugs such as oxycodone and cough syrup. I’d spend days in bed and refuse to go to school. At sixteen, I attempted to take my life with a series for sleeping aids. All I succeeded in was putting my self in a sort of coma where I slept for 5 days. I couldn’t make myself stay awake, but I didn’t really care. When my family would check on me, I would tell them that I just had a bad migraine and thought I was coming down with the flu. This event showed me that all I needed to do when my loneliness became unbearable was to take the right pills, and I would be able to sleep for a few days.
When I was awake, I was trying to get high, cutting my arms, having sex, or binge eating. My weight shot up thirty pounds in just a few months. The weight gain only further depressed me and made me feel even lonelier because I felt that people were looking at me like I was a tub of lard. It is easy to look at yourself like you mean nothing to the world when you are alone.
It took me until recently to realize that even when you have someone in your life, it doesn’t mean that you aren’t going to be lonely anymore. When I was seventeen I finally found myself in what I thought was a solid relationship and spend two years planning a wedding with him. However, I still felt completely alone in the world. The remainder of my loneliness and my severe depression is what eventually went into the destruction for the relationship. I began to slip again into the darkness when we broke up, I again thought of taking my life but my mom, thankfully unknowingly intervened. I didn’t allow myself to stay down for long. This time was different; I had something more powerful than loneliness and sorrow. I had finally found faith in Christ.
Looking back on my old life from the perspective of a Christian, I pray that I never lose the strength that I now have. I am fully aware that faith is what saved my life. I realize that all I needed all along was God. I no longer need a poisonous group of people to fill my void. My life is now full of true friends who share the deep faith I have developed. I have come to realize that I don’t need a man in my life in order to be happy and that my body is my temple and I need to respect it. Sex isn’t required in order to have a relationship with someone, and if they truly care about me, they will respect the way I am living my life now, and will be willing to wait until our relationship is at a point where sex means a great deal to the both of us. I realized recently that at twenty years of age, I have had seventeen partners, and when I think about who they were, each one of them, it never truly meant anything.
If I had known that finding God was all I needed to do in order to get out of the state I was in, then I would have done it a long time ago. Now, I devote my life to helping people that are in situations similar to the one that I was once in to get out of that lifestyle. I show them where I was and that all it took was faith to get me out it. With God my family, and my friends I know that I will never again feel alone. Truthfully, I also realize that I was never alone; God was always there, I just didn’t know it.
