Are you Lonesome tonight? Please read.

This is not a poem, nor is it a story, but it’s a heartfelt message to anyone else out there who is on their own tonight. People say that Christmas is a bad time to be lonely and I agree with that, but there are some compensations, in that you can buy what food you like, watch what TV you like and have beans on toast for Xmas Dinner if you want to.
I was fortunate. I have a daughter, son and grandson who live a few train journeys away from me but always invite me for Xmas. I find travelling hard…I have mobility problems and travelling by railway is no fun, but it’s worth it for the four days I have with my family. I’m going to share a bit with you. My grandson, Jack is three in April, but this Christmas he finally got to know me properly and I am so pleased that he asked my daughter “where’s nanny?” after I’d been home a few hours. I also got some cuddles and kisses from him, which may not sound very much, but I don’t get to see him very often and when he gives me that lovely grin and slips his wee hand into mine with complete trust, then I don’t feel that I’m missing too much. Of course I am nearly on the wrong side of fifty, creeping up to that awful sixty mark, but I can still hobble along with my walking stick and believe it or not, I still manage to play with Thomas the Tank Engine although my son-in-law has to pull me off the floor afterwards.
The worst thing is coming home to an empty house and knowing that I won’t see them again for a few months at least. Both my parents are dead and I don’t have a partner. I do have a cat…she’s white with seal point blue and has the most amazing blue eyes. She does miss me and proves it by first licking my hands and then nipping them with her teeth. I get used to an empty house fairly soon, I’ve been on my own a while now. But I don’t like New Year’s Eve. It’s noisy, I have a pub at the end of my street and I can hear people having fun. I think it’s that noise of people celebrating that makes me feel so alone. I do have a few Internet friends and my writing buddy, David, but he has a family and I don’t bother him around this time.
In fact I have many more Internet friends than I have real friends, a women on her own doesn’t have many close friends.
The thing about Internet friends is that you can tell them anything and know that they will stand by you. Believe me this is true. I have even met a few Internet friends, but I didn’t get on with one, although the other is now very close to me. I belong to a lot of both survey sites and quite a few review sites, where I made some wonderful friends. I’m a depressive and having friends who can put up with that can be hard, but I have also found that by talking about my depression I have helped a lot of people.
I joined ABC because I have always written, even those first few stories as a seven-year-old girl, who was always saving her mother from a deadly peril. (I worked it out for myself…one of five children I had to fight for my mum’s affection.)
I don’t want to make this too long, but I do want to try and reach others like me. It is lonely on this night. Something in our general make-up always expects the next year to be better and we do feel disappointed when the next year is just as bad, or even worse. Sometimes it seems that life will never get any better, but despite it all there are so many people like me who take comfort from their writing. When I write a piece for ABC I think of the people who will read it and if even one person understands what I have written then I have succeeded in what I set out to do.
Finally I would like to tell you all something else. I live in a two-up, two-down terraced house with a small garden. I love my garden which is full of roses, but I had one corner that was so dark that nothing would grow there. Year after year I tried all kinds of flowers but none would grow there. Eventually I decided that my corner needed plants that would survive in the harshest of conditions, so I planted snowdrops, anemones, winter Irises and Cyclamen.
This year has been mild and my dark part of the garden is now aglow with white snowdrops, purple anemones and beautiful pink and purple cyclamen.
Which only goes to prove, that sometimes, in the deepest and darkest of places grows the most beautiful flowers of all. Those that welcome back the colour in Winter.
You, my friends, are that colour, you exist in pockets of darkness…a shining beacon to us all.
Happy new Year, My friends, and may you blossom well.