NaBloPoMo for yesterday -- Loneliness

I didn't decide to do this until today, so I have some catching up to do.  Yesterday's prompt was, "When was the last time you felt really, truly lonely?"

The answer to that is twofold.  I am subject to episodes of clinical depression, and the loneliness at those times is more absolute and gut-wrenching than you can imagine.  I feel that not only am I lonely at that moment, but I always have been and always will be; it is that despair that has led me to consider suicide on more than one occasion.  (Please note that I said "consider", not "attempt".  I've always been too much of a coward to go through with it.)  My life feels like an infinitely large, utterly empty, totally dark room, with me in the middle of it, unable even to take shelter in a corner.  The last really severe episode was the week leading up to my daughter's high school graduation, and it was horrible.  I knew it wasn't fair to her to ruin her big day by killing myself right before it, and I also figured it wouldn't be fair to ruin it by getting myself clapped in the psych ward, so I decided to just get through those couple of days and then decide what to do.  Fortunately, the feeling tends to fade after a day or two, and by the time I got home I was ready to reach out for help and go on.

However, part of the reason that suicide seems appealing is because I have an unshakeable faith in where I am going after this life, although most of the time I also believe that it's against the rules and will avail me nothing to try to cheat and get there ahead of schedule.  It's not the traditional harps and haloes thing, but a place where I am surrounded by people whom I love and who love me, and where I am healthy in body and mind.  That last part is the hardest to imagine, but I yearn for it.  I believe that when I get there I will get my daughter back at the age she was when my parents took her, and that she will also be free of the demons that have made her life a struggle.  I will have the life I dream of -- two of them, actually, on separate planes of existance -- with happy marriages and many children and beautiful homes and social graces.  I know it sounds kind of weird, but it's all very real to me, and remains so even when I can see no reason for happiness and hope in this world.  I can always reach out to the people I love in those places, and feel them near to me, and so I am never completely alone.  It may seem like insanity, but often it is what keeps me sane.