The Velvet Submarine

I read this on tumblr today and I thought it was perfect.

Someone sent this message:
"Feeling lonely, worthless and ending up being alone forever."

This was the reply:

I used to lie in my bed for days on end, feeling horribly sad about what seemed to be nothing, hardly bothering to complete normal and essential tasks. My motor movements became slower, I couldn’t function properly, I couldn’t eat and whenever I slept, I slept for too long. I would wake up midday and notice that everyone had formed and moulded their busy lives around me and had tried their best to avoid my company. It was hard to comprehend why, and it still is. Perhaps you feel the same in a way, and I’m going to assume that you do. Not only did I feel alone and neglected, I felt that others had failed to even realise that I was lowering myself into an early grave. I was convinced that my bed was my favourite place too. If no one was here to love or care for me I could easily starve myself and watch my body wither away before my eyes. For a short while I could lose myself while I was asleep, but then my unconscious became infected with how I felt in my waking hours and I often dreamt of dull routines I went through in the daytime. I was weighed down, my chest felt physically heavy all the time, I would often be caught in half sleep and would be paralysed on my back, unable to move and would have to hysterically tell my mind to wake up. Most of all, I suppose, I felt that I was already destined to    cope with everything alone. I had gone through so much alone and I was sick, and tired of it. I couldn’t really understand the unfairness of what I was experiencing. I didn’t look into a mirror for a few weeks, but after pulling myself out of bed one morning and catching sight of myself, I hit my head hard against a wall, felt it throb with unfathomable pain, and then retrieved back under my duvet, and slept for a further two days.
 A week later I had managed to force myself into a trip to town. I had a few things to give into the post office and my mother asked me to buy some milk. I think I heard someone mutter under their breath ‘she has horrible bags under her eyes’ that same day. I went to the bathroom to put on some concealer, and I stood there looking at my lifeless reflection for a few split seconds before my body suddenly went terribly limp and everything went terribly black. I had only passed out once before, and I was shaking uncontrollably once I woke up. There was two people next to me, a lady with black hair and a man presumably with the ambulance. I was still on the shopping centre bathroom floor, and I moved my head slightly to face the vast, pink and cold tiled floor. What followed was blood pressure tests and a constant questioning of whether I was ok and whether my head hurt. I said no, but I lied. They let me go and I started to make my way home, not completing anything I said I would do that day. I passed the small, independent shops, the florist and the council building, and I then reached the tunnel that stretches underneath the road, that carries on to the other side of the park. I stopped for a split second to pull out a cigarette from one of my mother’s packets that she smoked and then continued for a little while. At one point, the cigarette fell out of my fingers and onto the pavement. Normally, I would have let it go, but as i had only started it a few moments before, I bent down to pick it up. As I did so, the sight of a small passage written on the bottom of tunnel wall had caught my eye. It was written in green permanent ink and it said “Solitude is fine but you need someone to tell that solitude is fine.” 
I didn’t quite understand it then, but that someone who wrote that small quote, was trying to tell me that solitude was fine. And it is fine. Being alone can be ok, feeling lonely is definitely a mutual feeling shared by generations of people and it will continue to be fine.  I don’t know whether dropping the cigarette was meant to happen, and I was meant to see the writing, but I woke up virtually the next morning and I felt fine. And it’s strange and surreal admitting it, but it felt so good and so refreshing to wake without that sadness and that weight on my chest. By all means i’m not saying that in a day you will find someone who adores you, and you will be rid of all loneliness. But I am saying one thing, that you can wake up tomorrow and realise that the way you feel can be embraced. It sounds like an affectation, a cliche, if you must. But if you welcome your thoughts, and if you enjoy the moments when you are alone. A form of happiness is sure to follow. You won’t be alone forever. I can guarantee that, I will offer you any sum of money (whether I can afford it or not) that on one morning in the near future, you will feel fine and you won’t feel worthless or unhappy and you sure won’t feel the least bit lonely.