It’s 9:00 PM and I’m really relieved that it’s close to bedtime.  I just got home from having dinner at The Olive Garden.  I left work late today.  It’s shameful.  It was such a nice day.  I shouldn’t have been working late.  I should have sneaked out and started this gorgeous weekend early.  But I have so much work to do.  So, I stay and try to get ahead – which I never do, by the way – get ahead, that is – while everyone else cuts out right after lunch. 
 

I am so resentful watching them file by my window at work.  It seems as if they have somewhere to go.  I probably would have left early, had I a big date or friends to meet, but I have neither, which means I have no good excuse to leave work early.  So, I sit and stew over the work that I have to do and no one to help me. 
 

I left work and that feeling hit me…  I was dreading it and trying to prepare myself all week so it wouldn’t happen, but there it is – early even.  That feeling of loneliness.  I turn off the lights and lock the door to my office to leave and suddenly the tears.  Tears that say I have no where to go and no one to go there with.  I think what if I run into someone in the hallway.  I better stop the tears.  So I go into the bathroom and pull myself together.  But as soon as I leave the building I can feel them coming again. 
 

I decide I better do something.  Crying in my car in the parking lot at work I know I shouldn’t go home because that will make the loneliness worse.  So, I decide to go to a place where I can sit and have dinner – even if it is by myself.  That’s nothing new.  This night I choose Olive Garden.  Things are always lively there.  I’ll sit at the bar to have my meal and pretend I’m a part of the big crowd that gathers – even though no one will talk with me. 
 

On my way to Olive Garden I’m listening to Mariah Carey and she’s singing about “All I ever wanted is you.”  I think that too.  I want someone.  I don’t know who he is or where he is but I want someone to want.  And the tears fall.  I wipe them because what if I run into someone I know at the light.  I can’t let them see me cry. 
 

I’ve never done this before – sit down and type a journal that I know other people will see.  But I think it will help me to release my loneliness and anger.  Anger because my life wasn’t suppose to turn out like this.  I’m not supposed to hit my late thirties and be all alone.  It’s not like I had someone and now I’m all alone.  My whole life I’ve been waiting for someone and no one has ever come.  I feel cheated because I’ve always tried to do all the right things.  But the ultimate payoff hasn’t come. 
 

I wish I could say that I am just lonely for a man, boyfriend, husband.  But I’d like friends too – female friends to laugh with, shop with, hang out with – even while I’m waiting for that man.  But I don’t have that either.  What I have instead is loneliness. 
 

I moved to this town a few months ago, far way from where I use to live.  I had nothing to keep me in my old town so I thought I should leave.  You know that say, “crazy means doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”  Well, that’s what I was doing.  I was living in a city where I was lonely.  No one was asking me out on a date.  In 16 years of living there, not one person asked me out.  I didn’t have any real close friends, so I thought, things can’t get better here.  I can’t keep living here and expecting things to change.  So, I moved – without warning to anyone (including myself).  I’ve been here several months and I’m still lonely.  No one is asking me out and I haven’t made any close friends. 
 

You know what close friends are?  It means come Saturday you call that friend and say hey what should we do today?  The question isn’t, “do you want to do something today?”  Because you and that friend or group of friends always hang out, so it’s assumed.  I haven’t had friends like that since high school.  I guess it’s called having best friends.  I watch that TV show “Friends” and I wish I had a group like that.  4th of July is around the corner and I don’t have plans.  I called my friends from my old town and told them I’m coming back to visit.  But I invited myself, it wasn’t like someone called me and said, “hey why don’t you come for a visit.