Thanks for joining me on this writing journey. The Prompts app for my iPhone has generated yet another engaging prompt. When I’m alone, I feel…. I hope you choose to play along. How will you finish the sentence?

My immediate response is, “When I’m alone, I feel peaceful. The movie in my mind finds me late at night when the phone doesn’t ring, when the house is quiet and there is time to read or perhaps time to write. There are no demands, no expectations. It is indeed a peaceful scene.

I then let the image expand and quickly understand that I am not actually alone. My wife had headed to bed earlier as is her habit and both dogs have called it a day. The collie has climbed up into the red chair and the lab is stretched out on the couch. Bird is still in her cage and seems to know that it is quiet time. Alone? No, I’m not actually alone. …

As I ponder the prompt, I realize that not only am I not alone, I don’t recall ever being truly alone. When I was at OU, I had a single room, but even then, all I needed to do if I felt lonely was to walk down the hall where I was sure to encounter one of the other four hundred or so undergraduates in the dorm. Sleeping was not a high priority back then.

I have certainly been in other situations where I was more or less by myself; but even then, to say that I was alone is a bit of a stretch. At best, the lonely part of being alone was no more than temporary. I had been with people earlier and would again be with others soon. The alone time was little more than a transition, a shift in scenes.

Disconnected comes to mind as I wonder what it would be like to be truly lonely. Sometimes I feel more connected and sometimes less, but I don’t recall ever feeling completely disconnected. Even when I was feeling less connected, I had no sense that there was any permanence to the condition. I knew that I didn’t like the feeling but knew that I would be more connected eventually.

I worked in mental health centers for thirty years or so and spent a lot of time with people who felt disconnected, who were very disconnected from friends, family and from anyone else who cared about them and what the outcome of their lives would be. For them, loneliness had been replaced with hopelessness. They were alone and felt like there were no prospects for anything better. I only mention that to make the point that I understand what real loneliness is and am very grateful that I have never personally experienced it.

Writing is a curious pursuit. I seem to have started in a peaceful place reading a good book, being amused by the dogs on the furniture and happy being alone without really being alone. A few hundred words later, I have taken us into a dark place where sad people are feeling disconnected and hopeless. Hoping that I always remember their pain, never forget their hopelessness, I also want to remember that they most all got past the depression, most all were able to renew old connections, were able to reconnect. Being lonely is usually but a temporary detour.

Let me see if I can bring us back to a brighter place. I’ll try the prompt again. When I’m alone, I feel something other than lonely. As for exactly what that feeling is, – Yes, I’m really going to say it. – it depends.

If it’s late at night and all is well with my world, I feel peaceful. If I am waiting for something I really don’t want to do like get my tooth filled, I feel a little annoyed and perhaps slightly anxious. If I just finished a successful project, I feel happy. If something has happened that causes me to be upset or sad …, -- Let’s not go there. As I said, it depends.

I’m thinking that I don’t have much more to say about it. I am pretty much of an introvert so being alone is normally a good place for me. I know people who quickly get restless when they are by themselves and don’t have somethi...