The hardest thing is feeling alone in a crowded room

I had vision of it watching an episode of the second season of The Chosen, and it shook me for a few seconds.  The character who plays Matthew sits with the other disciples of Jesus around the fire and is completely excluded because of what they’re talking about: being a Jew during Roman occupation.

Watching the scene through Matthew’s eyes, it’s polarisingly lonely being in his skin as the traitor who partnered with Rome while the other disciples suffered in the hope that their Messiah might come (though he hadn’t come for centuries beforehand).

For Matthew, he doesn’t feel worthy to be sitting around that fire, apart from the fact Jesus called him.  So he is there, but he doesn’t yet feel at home!

Take yourself back to the moment you were deliberately excluded.  Perhaps you deserved it.  Maybe you didn’t.  Whatever the case may be, it always feels horrible when there’s a purple circle and you’re not in it.

It’s as if you don’t exist.  And it’s as if they laugh and sneer at you even as you’re ignored.

When you’re in that place—and you only need to be there once to really be impacted—you swear it’s the worst loneliness there is, even if in truth there a million different forms of loneliness that can imperil us.

I remember when we lost our son, there were babies everywhere, and it seemed like everyone was having a baby or announcing they were pregnant or just so over the moon for someone celebrating.

At the time, no matter how people tried to connect with me on the matter of grief I was “all fine,” and that was as a matter of fact true in part, though I couldn’t just avail myself to just anyone.  My grief was private to me.

This is why grief is a lonely experience first and foremost.

We share portions of it with those who care, but there’s always a limit to how much vulnerability is to be shared, and how much you’ll burden the other even if you feel they’ve got the capacity for it.

Grief leaves us alone in that crowded room where everyone else is alive and awake and of good cheer.  At these touch points we feel utterly alien to experience what we do.

If you’re that person tonight or today, where you feel utterly alone in your world, as if your world were a room full of people, please know that you’re not alone, and that there are people out there who get it.

People you can connect with.  People who will include you.  People who won’t require anything of you.  People who will let you be even while they tend to your lonely heart.