Solitude, Loss, and the Will to Continue

By César Omar Sánchez

Summary: This piece is a raw meditation on my life in a world defined by chaos, loss, and emotional exhaustion. It reflects on my personal failures, the illusion of love, and the deep loneliness that comes with aging, isolation, and grief—especially the loss of a beloved companion who gave life meaning and routine. Against my personal sorrow stands a broader critique of humanity itself: a system that breeds alienation, desensitization, endless consumption, and violence, leaving people disconnected from love, compassion, and one another.

Yet despite the despair, the emptiness of returning to an empty home, and the recognition of humanity’s self-destructive tendencies, the narrative refuses surrender. Purpose survives through solidarity, political struggle, and the moral urgency to respond to suffering wherever it exists.

The world may be broken, love may feel illusory, and the future uncertain—but the will to fight endures. Even with a broken heart, the commitment to resist injustice, to stand with others, and to keep going remains an act of defiance and hope.

 

Well, it’s Wednesday night, in mid-January of 2026. I’m home, reflecting on my life—seeing the errors, the mistakes I’ve made over the years, many of which I’m still paying for. I often ask myself whether I ever truly loved anyone, whether I ever genuinely experienced love. I don’t know. Maybe I did, or maybe it was only an idea—something I convinced myself was love. Perhaps I romanticized my past relationships, mistaking illusion for intimacy. I don’t know. Maybe I’m finally giving up on love.

Love now feels like a deception, an illusion. I’m tired of disappointment, tired of being left out in the rain, tired of feeling lonely and lost, tired of coming home to an empty apartment. I suppose I have to accept it. I’m 52 years old and have no children. I could have had one if I’d wanted to, but if there’s no love within yourself—and so little left in humanity—how do you bring a child into this world? How do you bring life into a world so saturated with hatred? I don’t know. I feel lost.

Looking back, I’ve come to realize a few things. I chased women who never truly cared about me. I pushed others away. And the woman I believed I loved—I wasn’t really in love at all. It was an illusion. My mind deceived me.

On October 27, 2025, at exactly 3:02 PM, I had to put my dog to sleep. He was the one thing that kept me going. As a man with no kids and no family of my own, I always looked forward to coming home to him. God, I miss him. He used to jump on me—that Scooby-Doo leap—full of joy. The first thing he’d do was grab the ball and bring it over, ready to play fetch. Now he’s gone and gone forever.

I don’t know why I’m writing all this. I want to believe I can love again, but a part of my soul—a part of my heart—is missing. I feel like I’m crumbling, breaking down.

I’ve tried to outrun the pain: exercising, reading, playing guitar, getting involved in political work, and going to work when I can. Sometimes I sit at my computer, do some graphic design, or watch a Netflix special—and still I feel empty, as if something essential is absent. Maybe it’s the paradigm we live in. This system—chaotic and dehumanizing—produces numbness. People forget how to be human, how to be compassionate, how to love. I don’t feel it anymore. Some days, I want to give up.

What keeps me going is my solidarity work—standing against war, occupation, and imperial violence. Whether it’s fighting for Cuba’s right to self-determination, demanding justice for Palestine and an end to the ongoing genocide, or opposing ICE and the killing of civilians in the name of “borders and enforcement”, I feel compelled to act. I do what I can through design, writing, journaling, protest, organizing rallies, and political education. Even then, it often feels insufficient. When the work is done, and I head home, it’s a long, lonely road back to an empty place. I sometimes call it solitude, even peace—but at times, it’s unbearable.

At times, I feel like the narrator in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground—bitter, resentful, mocking the younger generation for their utopian faith that changing the system will erase human evil.

We may need to look inward. Maybe—maybe—self-destruction is part of our nature. From the beginning of civilization, humanity has been systematically killing itself. As Ronald Wright argues in A Short History of Progress, we are a species of runaway growth—consumption, population, and accelerating technologies that extract and exhaust the planet. Where does it end? Where is the restraint? Do we still have time to correct our course before it's too late?

Life itself may be the source of this feeling. And yet, despite the loneliness, the despair, the anger, and the moments of being lost, I still have hope—for a better future for humanity. I still believe I can learn to love. I still believe in organizations fighting for self-determination, at home and abroad. My heart may be broken, but it isn’t dead yet.

I’m still in the fight.