I once heard a legend that claimed that on days when one wakes up inexplicably sad, it is because the Universe assigned the mourning of someone who died with no one to miss them. The idea is that, even unwitnessed and unknown, no one is ever truly forgotten. Someone, somewhere will always ripple with their absence.

Existence is lonely.

When I look up at the night sky, I tend to feel a bittersweet aching. Everyone feels a drive to connect but there always exists an inescapable barrier between people, things, places. Sometimes, that distance has the thinness of an atom’s membrane. Other times, it is the vastness of galaxies stretching out, void of life or even just the simple inability to properly convey a thought or feeling to another that haunts.

Soul-deep dread will often rise in me when I allow myself to glimpse how deep goes the aloneness that we can’t escape. Yet, when I gaze into the abyss of that impermeability, it gazes back and reminds me that emptiness is not always a curse.

It is a horror and a mercy to know everything dies, be it stars… or suffering.

In this section, I explore in aspects both vast and minute the topics of existential loneliness, awe, and grief.