You have a full calendar, your social life is thriving. Friends, family, events and activities; you attend to each one with an almost religious zeal. You're always surrounded by people and plans and have a part to play in so many, many different worlds.

And yet even as you partake in people and pleasures you know the truth -- the alternative to this full, busy life is not an option for you because being alone for you is nothing short of an ailment, if not an anomaly... That to you, solitude and time with yourself are experiences you'd rather avoid because they manifest the thing you want to wish away, and try to wish away with much that you do and most of who you are -- your fear of being alone.

I'm not going to be alone
I don't want to be alone
I won't be alone
will I?
I must not be left alone
I will not be alone
I don't want to be alone
.... but why am I so afraid to be with me?

Well, if you fear being alone, the answer is to not be alone, right? Yet why is it that every time you turn to the world outside and around you - for the acceptance, joy, and belonging that you seek - you are still left wanting? Why, in spite of everything, do you still feel alone?

Because you are. Because deep within you is a void, an emptiness that the many worlds and all those who people these worlds are unable to fill. A void that drives you to keep growing your world and keep adding more worlds, and yet despite all these escapes, despite the quest to not be alone, you are always alone.

When I feel incomplete
and seek that missing piece
in another,
I lose yet another piece.
For when I come from pain,
pain is what I gather.

Indeed, when you begin something with pain, pain is the harvest. To feel incomplete and seek acceptance and love will yield the very pain that is the seed of the quest. Only when you come from completeness and self love, and self acceptance can you have a wholesome relationship with another. But since your inner world is dark in spite of being in the most crowded rooms, you will continue to feel alone. You have not yet acquainted yourself with the one person you need to know - you, and till you get on a first-name basis with you no one from the outside will fill that emptiness. Or even usher the togetherness you seek....

I go through life
seeking that elusive togetherness
that will yield me that deep, lasting joy.
I meet with disappointment again and again,
and yet I never turn to the one
who stands by me through it all - ME.

The fear of being left alone reads 'I dread me'. Think about it. You've always turned away from yourself. You've wanted to create a great life and share it with those you love but you never learned to enjoy being with yOU. You left yourself uncared for, unexplored and unloved. And since you came from lack: lack of love, lack of acceptance, lack of completeness -- lack is what you pulled in with every card you drew from life. Isn't it simple logic -- how you can possibly build any relationship when you have no relationship with you?

So, mend bridges with you. Learn that alone is not a disease nor is it abandonment. Alone is... bridging the bond with you. Bridge the Bond with You. Get to know you. Get on a first-name basis with you. And you will never be alone. You only need to unite with yourself with an open mind and a positive outlook to open that reservoir of inner joy you've been seeking. It's been here all along but you were always looking in the wrong place, you always searched for it outside of you even as it lay waiting inside. Delve within now and change everything.

Start spending time with yourself and get to know You. The You without any pretence, without any masks. The You that's honest. Uninhibited. Unplugged. Uncompromised. Deep dive and come out with the pearl that is You. And once you embrace the inner You and rejoice in its identity, there's no more emptiness, no void, no loneliness. Because you always have you.

"When I feel the void,
I fill it with love,
love of the I
and I am complete
and nothing do I seek."

~ Nupur Mahajan