The world is so huge, and each of us is alone

Melancholy. Thinking about all the friends I have who are having personal problems... depression and worse. My friend N feels as if she's wasted the last 10 years of her life. My friend E is harboring dark thoughts in what I know is desperate isolation. I myself despair of ever finding true love. And on, and on... It makes me realize that in the end we are all on our own, and that happiness--if there is such a thing--must needs be something we attain with neither the help nor hindrance of others.

I'm grateful that I don't feel the terror of life that I used to know daily, but sometimes I wonder whether I have been benumbed, and this peace is merely a transient slumber from which I will awake screaming years hence. I don't know.

Another hopeless early morning dream, before the grey of day leaks from behind my drawn shades...