We inherit this loneliness. A gentle passing down from one generation to the next like a secret family recipe. No one knows the ingredients that made this delicious mess, but we digest it. Swallow each prideful piece, bury the weight of solitude in the junk drawer of our genes. With every new child a new symptom is added. It is the unspoken truth, a fog has hovered over our heads for decades, generations of grandmothers and grandfathers that were chronically melancholy, great aunts and uncles passing with loneliness following them like ghosts. The room in our brains is haunted, but we do not speak of this terror. We never mention the thoughts that keep sleep so distant, the sadness that gnaws at our sanity. God forbid we ask for help, too much to be colored and crazy. Too many double-edged swords could kill a man. So we suffer in silence, tuck our secrets back in, and save them for a rainy day.