There are conversations that leave a mark on the soul—not because they offer answers, but because they name the ache we’ve carried quietly for years.

I had one of those conversations recently with my best friend.

It wasn’t meant to be profound. It started with logistics and carpool pickups. But it ended—like so many of our late-night texts do—in the terrain of existential longing, spiritual exhaustion, and that haunting sense that we’re all just trying to find our way home.

Not a house. Not even a place.

But that soul-level kind of home. The kind we may never have truly known, but ache for anyway.

The Ache That Lingers

She sent a message that stopped me in my tracks:

“We come alone and die alone. But the connections in the middle parts seem important.”

That line hit something deep. We spend so much of our lives striving, building, fixing, proving—but beneath all of it, there’s a quiet, persistent longing: to be known, to feel rooted, to not be so alone in it all.

I replied:

“For me it feels like a loneliness for another place that’s my home. Somewhere not here. I don’t like this planet.”

It wasn’t about depression. It was about dissonance. That out-of-sync feeling with the noise, the pace, the performance of it all. A yearning to return to something wiser, quieter, more sacred. A place remembered not by mind, but by my bones.

A Shared Loneliness, A Shared Language

We texted back and forth for days—on God, grief, belonging, and that eerie sense of carrying something ancient that no one else sees.

She wrote:

“There’s a weird sense of home in the loneliness and heaviness… even though I long for lightness and belonging.”

I knew exactly what she meant. Sometimes the ache itself is familiar. Sometimes pain becomes the closest thing we’ve known to home. That doesn’t mean we want to stay in it—but when someone else names it, when someone says me too, something opens. Light gets in.

The Spiritual Side of Loneliness

We talked about the divine. About whether the longing isn’t for a person or a place, but for a connection to something bigger. Maybe the ache is the path. Maybe it’s not something to fix, but something to follow.

She asked:

“Is that connection to a higher consciousness the home we long for?”

I didn’t have a clear answer. But I think yes.

The Friendships That Let Us Name the Ache

There’s something rare and sacred about a friendship where nothing needs to be explained. Where there’s no pressure to fix anything. Where the silence is safe and the questions are shared.

With her, I don’t have to polish the pain. I don’t have to shrink myself or pretend I’m okay. We speak the same soul-language—and that, in itself, is a kind of home.

I told her:

“Sometimes I feel less alone when I’m actually alone. But this—these conversations—this naming of the ache together… that feels like belonging too.”

For All of Us Who Are Searching

We’re not broken.
We’re not alone.

Maybe we’re just remembering something sacred that the world forgot.
Maybe we’re finding our way back to ourselves—together.

Let’s keep naming the ache.
Let’s keep finding the ones who speak our language.
They’re out there.
We are out here.

~