when you get this sorted out let me know because I am in the same boat.

My therapist says there is something useful about feeling and being in that place where we stand up and cry out: "I am lonely!!", that this teaches us about our needs and feelings and what we do and do not want, etc. I told her it just hurts a lot sometimes and that I cannot understand how its "useful". there is so much I do not understand.

But ultimately, I DO think its better to be alone than to wish I were. In my past marriage (I am now divorced) to an A there was a lot of abuse that was beginning to get physical when I left and that is unacceptable. I would be dead now if I had not left, I am sure of it.

I do think we (as al anoners) are a lonely bunch- we actively work to isolate and set ourselves apart through our behaviors and our own disease, too. We set ourselves up to be this way and I think its the part of the disease that I struggle with the most sometimes.

Its the part I turn over to HP, I have no choice in this- HP has me right where I need to be and I have faith in that. I do not know what his plan is for me. I stay in today and who knows what will happen! Hugs, J.

Those times of feeling so intensely lonely were the times I was the most vulnerable, and inevitably shot myself in the foot by once again seeking out a knight in shining armor (always a dysfunctional relationship in the end) because I refused to completely walk through those feelings of loneliness.

There was a little girl inside of me whose needs were never fully met, and I was afraid to meet her, and to nurture her. That loneliness would become too painful and I would short-circuit the process of healing.

I would call my sponsor and he would tell me to put the phone down, hug myself tightly (talk about uncomfortable), and say over and over that I am a child of God and deserving of love, especially from myself!

I finally learned to accept that loneliness, to embrace it, and there were nights I laid in bed and cried, and just felt it! I would tell myself over and over that I was worthy of love, that I did love myself, that I would take care of myself!

It was a long slow process for me. It did not happen until I quit sabotaging and reaching out for a fix elsewhere, for my feel-goods elsewhere just to get out of that loneliness. I can't tell you when it happened. I just noticed one day that the loneliness was gone. I also noticed that I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt that I could depend on myself, that I wouldn't let myself down, that life was going to be okay, one day at a time.

I did some crazy things during that process too, so please don't laugh. I used to love coloring as a child, sitting at the kitchen table during the cold winter months, when it was warm and the oven was on. So I'd get out one of the grandkids' coloring books and color. I even made a tent out of a blanket and two chairs, and colored underneath that! Imagine that, a grown woman coloring under her makeshift tent!

I still do things like that sometimes, nurturing the child within, and it feels good. It allows me to be spontaneous.

There are times I grab my camera and just get in the car to take a drive out in the country. If I see something I like, I stop to snap some pictures, whether it's draft horses out in a field, or baby lambs with their mothers.

I don't know if any of this makes sense, but it is what has worked for me to get past that damnable loneliness. I just had to be willing to ride it out, and do the work.

((((((hugs)))))))