Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.

Mother Teresa once said, "Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty." How accurate a sentiment from a woman who vowed poverty and celibacy. Perhaps pledging your life to God fulfills the parts of your life that aches for another to share yours.

How about an aching to share anything with another person unrelated to me? I'm sure many in post-college life struggle with the question of how to make friends after college. Besides the work place, what are your other options? It occurred to me last night that should I ever find myself in an emergency, such as being stranded and needing a ride, feeling down and needing a shoulder (real live person shoulder)or the like, I wouldn't have anyone to rely on to call. Remember being in college and knowing you could call a close friend on any given night and they'd come, no string attached? Now adult life as intervened and there are families, obligations and distance to thwart the nights of grabbing a bottle from atop the fridge to soothe your grief and without a word being spoken watching as a friend grabs hers and sits down beside you. Um, unfortunately that night ended with Goldschlagger out the nose, thus turning a somber grieving into fits of laughter, but also reaffirming that should a boyfriend break up with you, a teacher fail or embarass you, a rough day in general in the life of a college student, someone would always be going through it with you, by your side.

As adulthood sets in, the natural order of things determines we look for the by-your-side person to be found in a member of the opposite sex. Through thick and thin, for better or worse, your friend will share everything in your life and be your shoulder, as you are for them. Where does that leave those of us living permanently in the unnatural order section of things? Your friends find their person, and rightly and thusly, are no longer your person first and foremost. It doesn't mean they are no longer there for you, there's just a person and a life completely not involving you that suddenly comes before you. Similar, I'm guessing to spouses dealing with having a child suddenly in their lives. In the same vein, there are new friends, new circles which become more pertinant to where your friends are in their lives.

The ebb and flow of life continues, but the jetty remains. Slightly changed, weathered and beaten, but right where it started, watching the waves come and go. The overall look of the sea doesn't change, but the waves are never the same. When the jetty stops to look around and realizes the waves have moved on, but it has remained unflowing, does it mourn?

Last Friday night, a co-worker asked me what was new with me, after we covered the flowing of her life, and there was nothing. Jokingly, she said "Well, it's been nice talking to you.", but who could blame her if she wandered away. We decided I needed to work on having a story to tell, but how? Where do the stories come from? How do you ebb and flow when you are not an ocean, but a jetty? When you are living a life which has seemingly moved backwards, instead of forward. When you come home to your parents, in a world of people with their own spouses, houses and lives with no anyone to spend you free time with? The frequent feeling that your life has no living, no meaning, no purpose and...to paraphrase a cheesy song lyric, "that life has passed you by". To be The Forgotten in a world of The Blessed. To be surrounded with love and caring, with friends aplenty, yet to feel so terribly alone and abandoned? To be so turned around and confused that you no longer know which way to go to get you back on track. The days fly by and the nights drag on forever - well, you guys know I've never had trouble really sleeping, but the time between retiring and sleep is agonizing. The heartache is palpable and I pray every day the desperation is unnoticable.

It sounds so, depressing as I read it, and perhaps deep down, it is. I do not often dwell on it and most days don't even feel it, but I know it's there. I continue to peel away the layers of emotion in hopes of ridding myself of them altogether. It is in the few minutes between awake and asleep I allow myself to delve deep and explore, in the hopes of being enlightened to help turn my life into something more emotionally fulfilling. Perhaps between self-analysis and the pleading, begging prayer the wasting away of my life, that I mourn with such a heavy heart, will subside.