Page:I, Mary MacLane (1917).pdf/84

 To-morrow

SUPPOSE I'm very lonely.

It is luck—luck from the stars—not to be beset by clusters of people, people who do their thinking outside their heads, 'cheerful' people, people who say 'pardon me': all the damning sorts scattered about obstructing one's view of the horizons.

But for want of—other, other people—I am intensely lonely.

When I was eighteen I thought I must be the most lonely creature in this world. I analyzed my life then as now and it by itself had set me apart. But I stood then as it's given Youth to stand—on High Ground. I was strong to endure loneliness while viciously hating it. There was unaware a hope-colored bliss in my inexperience which companioned me. I felt it then without knowing I felt it. I can see that plainly now.

Now also I see plainly and feel plainly that I stand on lower ground, at poorer vantage. As my bodily strength which was then robust is now slight. The metaphysic life-shadows reach me more easily. They have a feel of fatally shutting down, fatefully closing in. They are the mirages on the dun-colored worldly air near me of my own useless untoward selves. There is no more the hope-colored bliss.