LONELINESS

Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted
is the most terrible poverty.

Mother Theresa



I remember being lonely for most of my growing up years. I never had many friends and never felt I fitted in, so I buried myself in studying and became an overachiever. I also buried myself in reading novels and lived in a fantasy world, always trying to escape that terrible empty feeling inside. I could be in a crowd of people or at home with my family, and yet the feeling of loneliness was always there. I didn't realize then that this was a kind of spiritual sickness, and I began to fill the "hole in my soul" with food; I was hoping food would take away the empty feeling. It took me years and a great deal of pain to realize that no amount of food could relieve that empty lonely feeling. Keeping busy couldn't help either. It was only when the pain of the food and the destructive things I was doing to myself became greater than the pain and the loneliness that I was trying to bury under mounds of food that I was brought to my knees and found the doors of my first program meeting.

Even though I wasn't sure that the program was for me at that first meeting, I knew then that I need never be alone. Other people suffered as I did and the feeling of not having to go it alone any more was very powerful. As I grow in the program and have discovered a Higher Power who is with me day and night, I have come to realize that I need never be alone. I can call on that Power at any time when I feel alone and scared. No longer do I have to feel the spiritual emptiness inside that used to drive me to food.

One Day at a Time . . .
I will remember to call on my Higher Power for guidance and help with my life; in that way, I need never be alone. When I follow the path that God intended me to follow in the first place, the loneliness disappears.


~ Sharon ~