Loneliness feels like being a grain of sand moving along a great beach, or an atomically sized particle floating through the infinite oblivion of space, everything huge, overwhelming and ominous and you small and irrelevant. Inside your head your scream, you scream the scream of a million desperate souls locked away in a dauntingly dank dungeon, but your scream cannot be heard because loneliness is suffered in silence.
When we are born our eyes open for the first time to face the blinding light and we let out a wail of tears at the prospect of leaving the womb. It was so lovingly comforting and easy, biologically connected to a maternal saint making it impossible to be alone. Birth is the beginning of it all, it is the start of never ending human anxiety. My adolescence is where everything changed and my life path jolted one way. I had a great upbringing in a highly middle class area of London, Chelsea. I went to an excellent private school and was bought whatever I wanted.
The problem was I didn’t want what was given to me. I wished to explore the world as I pleased and dip my fingers into pies I had never heard of before. The world seemed limited under my parent’s wings and I wanted to face the full thrilling brunt of it with open welcoming arms. I left home at seventeen after an argument with my father. That evening is still a fresh memory as if it only happened yesterday. I returned from an afternoon class late that day. During this class the opportunity had arisen to talk to the most attractive girl in my year, we were put as a pair for the class activity. We stayed a little time after and just chatted, it was truly amazing for me because I had never spoken to a girl before then; I was a very shy boy. My father was upstairs as usual drinking whisky and reading the Times while my mother cooked for hours in the cellar wooden kitchen. The moment I shut the front door my father’s heavy footsteps could be heard clumsily plodding down the stairs to confront me. He came right up to me his breath stinking of booze and cigarettes.
“What time do you call this, boy?”
“Sorry, I had an evening maths class with Mrs Alesbury,” I told him.
He sighed. “How come we haven’t heard of this evening class?” He asked, eyes narrowing.
“Because the school doesn’t feel the need to tell parents about every bloody thing that happens. God sake dad, why do you talk to me with suspicion all the time?” I exclaimed.
My father burped in his mouth and groaned, he had demons to fight and drink was his issue; it had been all my life. He was a born Scotsman and grew up with a love for bourbon whiskey.The problem was whiskey and family dynamics don't really combine. In my father's case it destroyed every family dynamic that my family ever had. As with most nuclear families I knew it was the mother of issues, suffocating everyone into this modernized house with the mother cooking and the father working. After all this was the 1960's, my parents were strong believers of this type of structure, but it was just that which pushed me to abandon ship. Breaking free from such a system where sex meant marriage was juicy salvation; my parents married at age twenty when my mother got pregnant and have lived together ever since dedicating their lives to the family, oh how depressing that life sounded!
“I wouldn’t have to be if you tell your mother or me where you’re going before disappearin’ without a fucking word!”
“Are you hearing yourself? I was home one hour late and you’re asking questions” I said.
My father laughed. “You always have to be such a difficult child. Why can’t you be more like your brother? He’s younger than you and he’s more responsible, you should be ashamed!”
My mother tried to calm the situation down as it became heated.
“Bill, just leave it. Screaming at him won’t improve his behaviour.”
