Are You.

Alone?

You are You. One among the Many who think that life is simple, sweet, kind and tender as a lovers kiss -- not. You are loveless, alone, tired and waiting for the right person to come, but no one comes. And You are stuck in a world that hates You when all You are doing is falling in love.

There is redundance in the histories of our lives that purge our subconscious with building insecurities and anxieties that release themselves through mood swings and unexpected bursts of insanity. That is where our utopia ends, when we unleash the hell from within our spires of our sugar-coated layers of Self.

In the moments that You are lonely and afraid of that same loneliness that has destroyed the lives of those like You, You feel that we are better off removed from what we see: this world of discrimination and misplaced righteousness.

She is the person you love, She is afraid of Your affections, She runs away, hides and stays hidden from Your expressions of love. Face it, She is afraid of You. She is straight.

How many of us tried to win the affections of a straight woman? I tried. I won. I was lucky.

But how many of us are like You? You tried. You lost. You were not as lucky as some. I can't believe You think that You are alone because You are not.

You are.

Alive.

As I deny that You are living in loneliness as a result of a lovers' affections demise or a mere flip of a page in the diary that has but written all over it the synonyms of loneliness, I believe in life. You are alive.

You breathe the world around and amidst the feeling of inhaling nothing, there is something in the air that keeps your heart beating. Your lungs are clogged with scents of death and dying. Yet they are only scents. The taste of life is in You as You walk, talk, feel, communicate and yes, suffer under circumstances which You feel You cannot alter.

I am speaking of survival. There You are, thinking and believing that life is being sucked out of You in the most painful way imaginable. The truth is, loneliness is the cleansing of the mind and heart. It sweeps Your past, and makes way for Your future. It is up to You to end the process. Some forget that loneliness ends and they live as though their lives were made to be lonely, but that is not the case.

It's Your.

Choice.

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Being thrown into loneliness is not the choice. The real choice is whether or not we stay lonely.

I've said in the past that we all choose what we want. We will the direction of our lives and make the decisions that affect how we will live in the future.

You can choose. You can select the way you handle loneliness.

The choice to be happy should be made before results are evident. Some of us make the mistake of believing that happiness must manifest itself before we choose to be happy. You expect a miracle to happen, a profound revelation, a sudden burst of heaven through the infernal well of loneliness You have trapped yourself in. It's not like that. In this case, "to believe" comes before "to see."

To love.

Again.

Another truth is: You can love again -- and again and again.

At one point in our lives, we forget that our capability to love does not wane when we lose a lover, in fact we become wiser and stronger and love becomes clearer to us.

There is no such thing as forgetting love or to love, only refusing to love or be loved.

You must realize that love will always grow. We must release it from within our souls to heal the hurts and drive away the feeling of loneliness. Now that is a choice.

Love starts from within and if we do not know how to love ourselves, then loving others would take twice the effort.

Be your best friend -- love yourself out of the loneliness. Shake your hand and give yourself a pat on the back.

Fire is a twenty-something writer-entrepreneur who's also one of the founders of INDIGO Philippines. You can reach her thru firewomyn@iname.com