Chapter Thirty: The Lonely Road

What happens after the script flips? You walk. Not away—through. And for a while, the path is quiet enough to hear your own footsteps.

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Back in June, when the awakening first hit, I was struck by how little I actually understood about the world. I’d always trusted science and planning. Not that I rejected spirituality or God—they hovered in the background—but certainty ran my days: knowing, predicting, executing.

As a kid at Christmas, I’d pore over the Sears catalogue and dream. I circled computers and gadgets my family couldn’t afford—100-megabyte hard drives, a 2400-baud modem—and designed the “perfect” machine in pencil. I didn’t know how I’d get any of it, but I believed if I studied hard, kept moving, I could build a small steady life: job, car, apartment. Mine.

I wanted friends—had some—but felt out of phase. Others seemed content to stay. I wasn’t. Not because I disliked home, but because I couldn’t see myself there forever. I wanted to become someone else, somewhere else.

College shifted things. For the first time I was surrounded by people with forward momentum—careers, purpose, independence. I worked multiple jobs, paid my way, made good friends. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was mine.

My first job was testing dental software—who knew that niche existed?—and while it didn’t call to me, I built side tools and earned a reputation as a problem-solver. Then a door opened: a friend told me about Yahoo in L.A. They had European offices. I’d always dreamed of living abroad. I jumped.

London changed everything. I joined the London Gay Men’s Chorus. I made a home. I felt seen. Later, music pulled me in—electronic beats that had powered late-night coding sessions became therapy on a dance floor. Above & Beyond called their show Group Therapy, and that’s how it felt: thousands dancing separately but connected by the same pulse. The Anjunafamily became a tribe. At shows I was hard to miss—short, loud, lit up like a walking Christmas tree. It was my way of saying, I’m here. Come find me.

And then, in Albania, everything changed again. It didn’t arrive as thunder. It stacked—small moments that refused to be random, converging into a pattern I couldn’t rationalize away. The air hummed. Coincidences clicked into place as if guided. For the first time I sensed the architecture beneath everything. Until then I thought life was linear: study, career, success, love, repeat. That experience shattered the illusion of randomness. It showed me life had always been intertwined—whispering, weaving.

I tried to explain. Friends and family listened kindly, eyes soft with confusion. Loved, but not recognized. That’s when the loneliness began. At first I called it integration—time to ground. But the deeper I went, the further the old world drifted. We spoke different languages now: theirs made of plans and goals; mine made of signs, patterns, energy. I’d stand on a dance floor and feel an ache. Once, the lights and bass meant unity. Now, it felt like I’d been given new eyes.

I returned to London and nothing fit. The job felt empty. The city hollow. Even the flat we’d built together echoed with absence. The script I’d trusted no longer read true.

So I left. I stored what tethered me and set out on what I imagined would be a joyful world tour: safaris, cruises, balcony mornings over the sea. I pictured new friends, café laughter, writing in sunlight. Instead, the farther I traveled, the lonelier I felt. Groups were kind, welcoming. I still felt unseen. When I spoke of what happened, people nodded politely and changed the subject. Their warmth was real; their understanding wasn’t there.

Here’s what I learned: once you wake up to a deeper layer of reality, you can’t simply go back. You can play along—weather, food, itineraries—but underneath, a quiet dissonance hums. You’re moving to a different rhythm.

I kept walking. The world got quieter. There’s value in that quiet. Solitude strips you down; the inner voice gets louder. But humans aren’t meant to live there forever. We’re relational beings. We come alive through contact—through touch, laughter, being seen.

Some afternoons, wandering a beautiful city, I’d imagine everyone disappearing. Cafés, beaches, sunsets—still there, suddenly hollow. That’s what awakening can feel like: walking a ghost world, half in one dimension, half in another. You can smile, love, participate—and still feel the invisible hum that says you no longer fully belong to the old frequency.

Even with my mom, even with friends, I felt the gap. They tried. I tried. No one at fault. I could barely explain it to myself. It was as if I’d stepped off the known map into an unmapped country. The compass still pointed, but the landmarks were gone. I longed to meet people who could see the Shimmer too—who could talk energy and synchronicity and then laugh about dinner or a ridiculous chakra dream. They were nowhere to be found.

So yes: I was walking alone. And yet, in that loneliness, something unexpected took shape. At first I called it despair—the ache of being misunderstood, the fatigue of belonging nowhere. Slowly, I realized it was becoming. The world had gone quiet so I could finally hear myself. Without the noise of validation, there was only presence—raw, uncomfortable, real.

The Shimmer didn’t abandon me in the silence; it taught through it. A lyric that mirrored a thought. A stranger’s smile arriving on time. Numbers repeating like breadcrumbs. Subtle, steady. That’s how trust returned—not the old trust in plans and logic and familiar company, but a deeper rhythm that carried me even when I felt lost.

The Shimmer wasn’t asking me to isolate; it was asking me to listen. To stop filling every quiet space. To let stillness become a teacher, not a punishment. Because on the lonely road, loneliness isn’t just absence—it’s spaciousness. Room to breathe, to grow, to let old identities fall away so something true can root.

In Malta, on another dance floor, I felt the echo again. Lights, bass, bodies moving as one. Once, that meant union. Now, I felt a dream version of a world I used to inhabit. Beautiful. But I wasn’t in it anymore. Beneath the ache, a truth pulsed steady: I wasn’t lost. I was crossing. From one life to another. From one form of belonging to a new kind.

Every transformation has a point where the old world stops recognizing you and the new one hasn’t formed. That space—between identities, stripped of mirrors—is the true lonely road. Terrifying. Holy. You learn that belonging isn’t about being understood; it’s about being authentic even when you aren’t. You learn that connection isn’t always loud or social; sometimes it’s the whisper that says, Keep walking. And you learn that love—the kind that endures—starts here, in the still point where you remember who you are when no one’s looking.

So I keep walking. Not searching for what was lost, but seeing what’s still here: the Shimmer, the pulse, the quiet proof that even on the lonely road, I am not alone. Coherence—like love—works in harmony, and harmony begins with a single voice learning to sing again in the silence.

Every awakening carries a season of solitude. Not punishment—calibration. The pause between who you were and who you’re becoming. The breath before a new kind of belonging.

I used to think loneliness proved something had gone wrong—that I’d wandered too far, that the path had failed me. Now I see the lonely road wasn’t a detour. It was the initiation. You cannot rise without standing alone. You cannot hear your voice until the echoes fade. You cannot meet the world as yourself until the false selves fall quiet.

Somewhere along that quiet stretch, I stopped reaching for the old world to return and began letting the new one unfold. That’s what the Shimmer had been guiding me toward—not the end of connection, but its rebirth.

Looking back, I can see the arc: the boy dreaming of computers and freedom. The man chasing belonging through work, love, and sound. And the soul who learned that belonging begins within.

The lonely road isn’t empty. It’s where you meet yourself. And once you meet yourself there—truly meet yourself—every road after that feels like a homecoming.

—and that’s where the next chapter begins: not with a new address, but with a new definition of home.