Becoming Ashlee

I want to go there. I feel it pulling on me; it tugs at the pit of my stomach. A place where I would be so alone, wrapped in the empty loneliness. I would be filled to bursting with glorious emotions; longing, fear, excitement, thrill, love, grief, amazement, wonder — ecstasy. The vastness would overwhelm me; the eerie emptiness of so much space and the oddity of the things left behind. I would be caught between the joy of being there and the agony of never being able to be there enough — my finiteness; unable to fully explore, fully experience. I would feel so small and awed — by the power of the passing of time and the inevitability of decay. My imagination would race, grasping for the ghosts of the people who used to be there; the life that used to pulse there. The highest kind of solitude I could achieve — glorious, and I long for it. I don’t know why, but there’s something about being alone that I need. And yet it is the very thing I am terrified of…