I thought I knew what being a solitary was like after all these decades. But I didn’t. I thought I could always handle it. And unfortunately, I can. But I see something I never really appreciated before. And having that significant other, a body and soul connection where our innermost selves feel completely at ease with each other, embraced, loved, seen…grounded…home…would be really good to have now.

I never found him. I’m an only kid. Maybe that made it easier for me to get used to the inner solitude, even in those times when I tried to escape it and couldn’t. Plus the torrent of abuse gay kids got in the 60s/70s, to remind me that love was not mine to have. I tried to find him, but as I became a senior citizen I settled in to the void because there was no where else to live (people who look like that want people who look like that…) and by then I’d made it comfortable. It was the room of my own I always had ever since I left the cradle, where I could occupy myself with pastimes, where love could have been but never was. I never really grasped how it would feel, when I finally came to this moment, and I saw the void was bigger than I realized without that significant other to keep us both steady.