I’m sitting at a goddamn cafe, by myself like some melancholy hipster-wanker. I bought this pad and pen on my way home from work. Actually, I bought them on the way back from the road that leads to the beach where I planned to sit in my car and cry for an extended period of time. Half way to the beach I decided that it was much more cliche and therefore appropriate to sit in a crowded place and remind myself of how surrounded I am by people, but yet how alone I feel.

I know that most people feel exactly this way at some time in their lives. I know that most people feel as lost as I do, often. I know that not knowing which direction to head in is not something that I am discovering for myself on behalf of the rest of the human race. I know that if I posed my problems in the form of a question to the online community via google, there would most likely be a yahoo answer with some stupid responses and probably some poignant, helpful suggestions, advice and anecdotes from strangers’ lives. Still I feel as if I’m walking around on this Earth with no meaningful connection to anyone or anything other than the rhythmic, routine relationship between my feet and the floor.

Loneliness is common. It’s dependable. It’s ever-present – for everyone? Surely, in the billions of people on this planet, there is someone out there who fits, just so, perfectly within my heart. Surely, there’s this someone who is kind, who is thoughtful and respectful and who thinks I’m just exceptional, as I do them. Surely there’s someone who I’d feel proud to stand next to and to bring home to friends and family and claim them as my own, my one and only. Surely there’s someone out there who I’d be so completely sure is the person I can trust to love so immensely and who I can trust so completely to love me just the same back.

When I think about this person in my mind, when I try to quantify them, they are faceless. Does that mean I have no idea what I want in a partner? Does that mean I don’t care what they look like? Does it mean that I’m doubtful such a person exists and I just simply cannot believe there’d be a real person to apply these qualities to, that I shan’t even bother trying?

Return my gaze, faceless stranger. Just look this way once. Let me know you. Let me know you exist so I don’t give up. No amount of words out-do this lack of action and this lack of presence. I want to believe you’re just over there at that table in front of me. I can see the back of your head – please just turn around and see me. Let’s talk.

There she is; polishing those glasses, smiling at those customers, clearing those plates. How is it that she can make the most mundane of tasks appear in slow motion and somehow be the most sensual act I could imagine?

She’s concentrating hard, eyes darting from saucer to cup, from cup to spoon. A tendril of that beautiful – and I assume duckling soft – golden hair hangs across her forehead. She swats it away so swiftly, but so gently. I imagine that’s it’s my finger pushing that hair behind her ear. I imagine this happening in the warm morning light, all snuggly and content, bodies pressed against each other. The fingers of my other hand tracing the dappled light on her bare back. I’m excited because I know at any moment her eyes will open dopily and stare right into mine – this is my climax.

“What can I get for you today?” The waitress asks my boyfriend.

I didn’t realise just how much I utilised symbolism in how I relate to and write about my feelings and experiences until now. Water is a recurrent theme in my thoughts and writing. It is clearly a symbol of my emotions – deep or shallow, capable of swallowing me up or carrying me to great heights or far away places. It can be gentle or unrelenting and fierce. It is something that is separate to me, something I have no control over, something that happens to me. It’s a force not to be trifled with. I can jump in feet first, or try to swim and fight. Either way, I am at it’s whim.

I’ve been crushed by it’s weight. I’ve been the one that’s allowed it to crush me more than it may have if I’d fought when I could. I’ve been the one that’s kept one foot out when it was warm and soft and when I could have jumped in safely.

I’ve decided that if my emotions are like water, then it never really affects me in a lasting way. A wave might crash against my back, again and again and it may move me from where I stood once before, but I will be dry again at some point. The waves will become droplets, and the water I’m standing in, may just become a puddle. If not ever dry again, at least no struggle against it’s movements.

I’m buoyant now, in the ocean that I find myself in currently. It caresses, it’s immersive, it’s warm and loving. I don’t know yet whether I’m with someone in this, (four feet in!), but I know I can swim. I’ve been moved by waves before and I will be again. That’s clear.

Here you are; entirely perfect and entirely unsuitable if you were physically real. Right now, you’re a figment only. A dream; a thought that is pleasant because it doesn’t have to be exposed as truth.

Right now, you’re a lovely apparition in my bed, in my head.

They are your lips pressed against mine late at night when I rest on my pillow. They are your fingers pressing lightly into my scalp displacing my hair as they move.

You’re the heavy weight lying next to me and the rhythmic inhale and exhale sounds that send me to sleep, peacefully.

When I wake, you’re the empty, cold place in my bed and the thought that occupies all of my head. You’re the silence between my own breaths and the pulse between my legs. You’re the stillness in the air and then…the tone that plays on my phone.

There you are: real enough in a digital display. Maybe I should leave you there. Imagined, perfectly. Maybe you’re so perfect because I can’t have you.

I’ve tried every position of my legs on this bed – horizontal, vertical, diagonal. The fan off and on. I’ve placed the sheet over my face inhaling and exhaling. I’ve laid naked with the breeze on my skin, worrying about peeping Toms. I’ve wiggled my toes and rocked my body back and forth. I’ve rubbed my chest, I’ve patted my belly. I’ve talked to myself out loud: “You can’t do anything about it now, just focus on the here and now. Think about the sound of the wind in the trees, the taste in your mouth, the touch of the pillow on your face. Be here, right now.”

There’s a noise outside. It distracts me from my failing breaths and the hours that I’ve been awake. From the window, I can’t see anything out of the ordinary. My housemate is asleep. I decide the dusty cricket bat by the front door will be a sufficient companion to accompany me outside, to investigate.

My feet are deserters – they were restless in bed and now they’re claiming fatigue. I stamp up and down on the cold tiles of the laundry before opening the back door. If I’m going outside where there’s potential danger, I need my “all terrain vehicles” to be ready for action. Adam always calls them “all terrain vehicles”. It’s adorable but also lame as fuck – he has the worst Dad jokes. I wish he was here.

The door is hard to open and impossible to do so quietly. A loud creak alerts the entire neighborhood to my presence. I hold it open, the light spilling around my shape onto the verandah. I wait for more noise. I wait for acknowledgement. It does not come.

I step outside and look around lazily. I’m disappointed there’s nothing out here but my Christmas gift hammock swaying softly in the breeze. I stretch it out and carefully sit and swing.

I am alone with my insomnia. I am alone with my torturous, relentless thoughts. Morning will never come.