Our Milky Way and lonliness

This beautiful cluster of stars and dust and matter that is our milky way galaxy. It is so incredible hanging out there alone at night in a sky filled with a billion stars, planets and other galaxies. Sometimes we get the pleasure of seeing it in it's full grandeur, when the moon decides to sleep and the location you happen to be in has no light pollution, sadly, some people I've heard have never seen it. I have had the good fortune to clearly see the milky way every summer for about the last five years. I have happened upon it on those special nights and been able to have my lens capture even more if it. To think that it has been there for eons and eons of time is amazing, yet in my short life span I have only enjoyed it for five years. Enjoyed it is a bit of a understatement. I am captivated and in awe of it, the darker the sky, the more my eyes adjust, the more perfect the timing and position of it and I am left stunned, mesmerized and unable to look away. The energy I feel always keeps me awake and I hate to leave it. All those years I missed out, sitting inside instead of out- I can't regret that, I can only change it from here forward and ensure I visit it and capture it's likeness as often as possible. It's like a little secret affair I am having with it and I can't wait for the next visit.

As much as I love the milky way and gazing upon it, it causes me to feel lonely. I know kinda of silly isn't it? And a bit hard to describe this feeling. Maybe it has to do with the infinitesimal amount of  stars in the beautiful galaxy, each one shining alone yet together in the cluster. It reminds me of a world full of people and me alone with them. Maybe it has to do with the night I first saw the milky way clearly on a hot early July weekend at the cottage.  It was late friday night, 1030 ish and my sister and her husband and my two youngest kids were heading over to the back beach to shoot the stars. I had asked terry to come, begged him, saying come on honey it's dark skies come on it will be fabulous. He opted out, too tired from work that day. I will never forget when I stepped out of the woods and onto the beach and it was just hanging there low in the sky, darkish red from the warm day, a glow to it and all its shadows visible shining like lucy in the sky with diamonds! It took my breath away, I wanted to cry, I think I did , I said oh my god look at it just look at it! I could almost reach up and touch it I swear. I thought "how had I never seen this before"? And immediately after that "oh Terry is not here to see it with me". Perhaps that is why I am lonely when I see it, he never will see it with me, like he didn't then. Or perhaps I just wish I now had a love to see it with, like all my family around me does.

Oh I have my shining stars close by don't get me wrong and I am grateful, where would I be without them? But I am my own person now in the seven billion on this planet. It is not really about seeing the milky way without a someone to share it with, I do share it with them, it's about lonliness in general and what a fuck bag of shame that causes. It is a shameful thing to be lonely, a hard thing to admit, and it is looked down upon by society-yes it's a shameful thing to be and feel lonely. Not to be alone ( many times that is good and a relief and even a worthy thing if you are holding out for one worthy of your love, it's something we even brag about, this aloneness) no, I am talking here about lonliness, wanting that relationship- not having it yet but wanting it and feeling lonely as a result-that is shameful to others, they pity you. I do not know what to do with this underserved shame but to write it out.

I am one person living my life-not a couple anymore. Not married or dating or engaged or courted by anyone. Now there is a old fashioned word, one my daughter brought up the other day on our drive home from the cottage. I was asking her advice on how she stayed single for five years and then found the right person. It's a topic I am interested in right now so we were chatting away about it, me wanting the inside scoop in how the millenials are doing it.  She said her and Andrew had decided to "court" one another when they first met. So I asked her what she meant by this and she said, it was a mutually agreed upon exclusive dating trial at getting to know one another to see if they wanted to go on to have a serious relationship. I congratulated her for being so smart. No games, no casual sex with friends or strangers cause your horney, no moving too quick, just old fashioned lets court one another and see where this goes.  We can learn things from our youngins.

Which brings me to what I learned. I may be alone, I may have many days, months even years of lonliness to come. I may hate it, I may feel society's shame over it. That is just the way it is right now.  Just because I want a partner doesn't mean I will have one. There may be many more summers of seeing the milky way without holding hands with someone to love and share the experience with. Even if that doesn't happen, even if that is not okay, that just is what it is.