When I got out of 5 pm Mass on Saturday evening, the evening sky was still as hot and intense as the day. Usually the intense brightness of the afternoon would magnify my gloom, especially so, when I am just getting out of a family friendly Saturday Mass full of families with small children and married couples in love. I feel God’s presence very strongly at every mass I go to, but I also feel extreme loneliness among the crowd during my persistent low mood. And that is perhaps why I prefer to go to 7 am Mass on Sundays.

But I wasn’t crying like I usually do on the drive back home. I felt extremely happy. Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t like I had special someone to sit with me during the Mass. I was as alone as ever. But why was I so happy? Was I simply riding the temporary happy hormonal wave? Or have I reached the ultimate summit of solitude where the pain of loneliness cannot reach me?

Then I remembered the prayer I wrote down about a month ago. I wrote that short request to God in the book of prayer after attending the Eucharistic Adoration. I was still weeping in pain after finally giving up my willful battle against the unwanted emotion of loneliness. I was so tired of fighting my chronic sense of loss, loneliness, and dislocation; the root of all human misery. I wanted God to put an end to that. So I wrote down a request, asking God to “heal my loneliness.”

And the new level of happiness I was feeling was the proof of the answer to my prayer. Something has happened, and I could feel that I was healed in a brand new way. I lifted my eyes up to the bright, summery, evening sky. I could only smile. I was so happy to be alive. I couldn’t even remember the years I spent in so much agony and hopelessness with no desire to continue my life, only full of desperate urge of suicide. I no longer felt those long dark years.

I saw some clouds scattered in the sky. I wanted to remember that happy moment forever. I took a snap shot of the picture with my iphone. I don’t know what you see in the picture, but there, I saw a girl with a very content smile on her happy face. And I smiled with her, too.