I stayed home for Thanksgiving today. Not that I wasn’t invited to join others. My niece invited me to join her and my brother’s family for dinner and my wife asked me to come to her family’s celebration. Instead, I stayed home. Why? Because I’m lonely.

Makes no sense, does it? Seems that a lonely person would be happy to have someplace to go and not be alone. The trouble is that a lonely person is always alone, even in a crowd. To have happy family all around me would just make me feel all the more alone. Like a rock that sits in the middle of a stream, while all the happiness flows around me, not touching me. Alone even among family.

It’s hard to explain, even harder to understand. Certainly this isn’t a new phenomenon; all of my life I have felt like an outsider, even with family. While not new, it is worse now. I chose to be with someone new, but that decision has meant that I have been with no one for over six years now, with no expectation of ever being with her again. I can’t move forward and I can’t move backwards. I am stuck like that rock in the stream with time and people moving around me, being unable to affect either time or people.

So, on that cheerful note, I hope that if you are celebrating Thanksgiving today, you are happy in the company of friends and family. I hope that you feel a part of it all and are appreciated and appreciate what you have.

Happy Thanksgiving.