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Sistah Shoop
hung up the phone. She
stood for a moment running the conversation through her mind.
Was there truth in what she had been told?
She knew her friend had nothing but her best interests at heart
and now wondered if she did as well.
When she was a
child it was nothing for her to spend good amounts of time by herself
or rather on her own. Her
parents had allowed for that. It
never seemed a concern and if it did either parent would instruct her
to go out and play. Shoop
had always followed their instructions.
But more often than not she took that under her own accord.
When she needed to be out and amongst her friends she went,
because she knew it was what she needed.
Sistah Shoop
looked back at her childhood, it was a good childhood as she had been
allowed to play as a child with all the other children in her
neighborhood and yet she also found time to be alone, to play alone
with very little space for loneliness.
In the conversation with her friend she was told that she was
lonely. It bothered her
to think that what she said or what she did or didn’t do was seen as
being lonely. Yes, there
were days when there was no one to play with and as a result she would
have a moment or two of feeling lonely.
A moment or two, she thought, was all one needed for that
emotion because ultimately it had nowhere good to lead.
When she stood
in one of those minutes and felt its pull, Shoop generally had to
summon up strength to deal with it.
She knew that she merely needed to only shift what she was
seeing in her thoughts to a good book, a movie, surfing the internet,
a walk or writing. Any one of those things would carry her off and out of the
moment if she so chose. In
her childhood she could play dolls for hours on end after one of those
moments. Being lonely was
not something that she welcomed, but she did see it as a sign that
something in her life needed attention.
Sistah Shoop
understood there were times when she needed to mingle with society.
Those were not her most favorite times.
Too many people, too many opinions and too much time to spend
on pointless dynamics that she knew didn’t fit in her life.
She also understood that there were times when she needed to
just be with herself. No one, no opinions and no time better spent than learning to
understand who she was and wasn’t.
In either place Sistah Shoop could feel lonely.
Being with people didn’t mean she couldn’t find herself in
that position and that was okay with her because she knew regardless
she was always on her own.
She hadn’t
said this to her friend. She
had not shared with her what she knew of herself.
Shoop had simply let her express.
She had listened. Perhaps
there was truth in what she had been told, just simply not her truth.
But then truth doesn’t really exist, does it?
It just all boils down to what one believes and nothing else.
The truth was that Sistah Shoop was not lonely, at least not at
this minute. Could she
be? Yes, just like
everyone else. Did it
matter that she didn’t socialize? No, because she knew her
socialization couldn’t be measured against someone else’s need to
socialize.
Sistah Shoop
knew her friend had her best interests at heart, that’s what friends
were for. And in that
moment she missed her very much, and in that moment she felt lonely.
She walked to her desk and flipped open her notebook. She picked up a pen and began to write.
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