Has there ever been a lonelier time to be alive?

I listen to my audiobooks as I drive five hours a week to get to my travel nursing assignment. To and fro, I’m immersed in times past.

These couple of weeks, the novel was set during the dust storm. It was a dire time of famine, hunger, desperation, death, and loss.

They had community. There were no devices to keep them in a fake world – they lived and breathed the world that they woke up to every day.

There were friendships – actual human, face to face conversations. They went to each other’s homes, broke bread, brought fresh produce, checked in on one another.

They went to church where the star was the Bible. They humbly served each other, and were in community.

For over a decade I’ve talked of the great big church, and the abject loneliness therein. The inner circle of country club Christianity- a scourge that gets worse by the year.

I sought connection as a young child, and found it in church. In community. In relationships with like minded people, who walked the walk.

For fifteen years, that has been missing in my life.

My days are spent alone. My phone rarely rings. I speak to my family, and I see my son and his family weekly when I babysit my grandson. The rest of the time, silence. Solitude.

Loneliness.

I’m purposing to spend more time with my loved ones – the ones who live an hour away, and the ones who are states away, I call more frequently.

The vast, vast amounts of my time are spent alone…and yes, lonely. I commute to work for days. I’m home and see my husband when he gets off work, and on weekends I’m home.

I’m tired. Tired of being lonely. Tired of fighting for community. Exhausted in striving to get the Body to do what it should do…but won’t.

Coupled with my depression, the loneliness compounds the negative narrative that tries to insinuate itself into my thoughts. My will to fight for connection wanes when I feel I can’t even get out of bed some days.

My dogs surround me. They bring comfort, as they know I am sad. Again. Still.

It’s not the same as community.

That’s what I need.