What lies beneath loneliness

Irritation, a terrible frustration.  Infuriated that I keep pushing myself to do chores and more chores, until it’s time to sleep and I haven’t even had dinner.  And nothing nice!  Nothing good!  So longing for… for what?  For whom?  Why? 

I am lonely, lonely I tell myself.  But I have friends, and I have talked myself hoarse again, these last few days.  So why lonely?  Lonely for what? 

And I fear.  Could it be?  Could it be my longing is for love?  Then I am looking for it in all the wrong places.  No, one does not long for love.  That doesn’t happen.  One longs for a particular person, does one not?  Not for love in general.  No, only sex, isn’t that true?  Nobody longs to be addicted.  So what am I longing for, truly?  Am I lusting after another woman’s men?  Is it lust that’s hidden beneath loneliness? 

My cousin’s accusation rings loud in my ears.  "You sound like you’re still sweet on him."  My ex-husband.  It’s not true, is it?  No, it was the other one… 

Oh?  The other one who’s another’s, and isn’t even slightly interested?  Like that’s better!  Another woman’s men. 

"You can’t help whom you fall in love with," she says.  And yet, I point out, we all guard our hearts against those we can’t have; against those we mustn’t want.  "Yes," she acknowledges, slowly.  And I let mine open a crack, and something got in.  Something breeds there, like the virus that keeps me alone.  Something all too bestial, unholy, uncivilised.  Something both immoral and unethical; something shameful.  Something rages against the monastic, the hermetic. 

And it doesn’t care what isn’t wise, or refined, or practical.  It ignores all standards and settles for anything it can have – or thinks it can steal.  I do not seek to entangle men through lust.  No, I see not potential lovers, but potential husbands.  I engage them with friendship.  I do not see it for what it is, even as I write it. 

I rage against isolation, and against those who have each other, and are miserable still.  I make pitiful entreaties to Justice, for surely, how much can be reasonably demanded of me? 

Day nine.  This is day nine.  It’s called a cycle, and I may have forgotten its full intensity.