Perhaps it's the prospect of another partner-less holiday season, but I am sunk in a loneliness much deeper than I have known for a very long time.

Worse, I cannot think of who to reach out to to for help.

I know this lowest of low points will pass. A heavy dose of carbohydrates, a trip to Target, a couple of sales, will dull it down again. But the roots remain.

My personal cell phone scarcely rings anymore. Where once I could call upon two or three people when I felt blue, now I can think of no one with whom I am in regular enough contact to reach out to for comfort without also feeling I am interrupting them. Distance does that. People's schedules do it. The modern world and all the supposed wonders of increasingly impersonal contact does it.

As I may have written here before, for various reasons, my once robust social circle - so vibrant that sometimes I chose not to answer my phone because I was simply tired of talking so much - shrank in the last couple of years. I don't regret the couple of those lost friendships I could control, and can do nothing about those that have moved but wish them good luck. Yet no one has yet stepped into those empty spaces to flush it back out again. I know that I'm the same person, still just as capable of attracting and keeping friends, but it's been surprisingly tough here. I feel isolated.

Earlier this year, I read the book, "7 Habits of Highly Effective People," in which the author encourages the reader to set his or her life's goal. I thought about this long and hard and decided mine was to help people in emotional distress. I think that I have tried everything since to do so. In my work. In my e-mails. In inviting people, calling them, trying to be there for them. But the question keeps going through my head, "Who is there for me?"

I come home at night and I cannot think what to do, who to call. I reach for the wine. I take the dog for long walks. I think about blogging. and then I do not do it because I can't think what I have to offer. Certainly, it is not anything funny. My sense of humor seems buried.

I feel a failure as a mother, for my inability to find friends for him, for the inability to get him onto sports teams and bond with other kids his own age like normal children do. I feel we are close to a point that is unhealthy, reliant on one another in our mutual loneliness for peers. The idea of staying in this complex - where neighbors simply dash from car to apartment door and back again - while I try to find a child-rich neighborhood and save for a down payment is bleak indeed. I know there are better places for us, and we will find them, but for now, the potentially lonely months until that time stretch far, far ahead.

The prospect of trying to find a partner is wearying. Internet? Clubs? Classes? All so tiring. Such work to find someone with whom to share these most simple things, who to turn to at the end of the day, and in the dark of night. I want it so much. I am so afraid to try. I want to simply skip the getting-to-know-you process, the search, trial and error. I want just to get to the comfort of knowing someone loves you enough to see you without makeup. (Yes, that is an attempt at levity and you laugh, but I truly consider this a landmark in a relationship.)

Still I think I made the right move in coming here. Colorado Springs was no place for us either and Denver has so much to offer. The job is a huge step up financially, the prospects beyond my imagining, the challenge welcome. But I can't seem to break through, to get the time to make the connections - friendly or romantic - that seem so desperately needed.

Is it childish to express it here? Am I sunk in a pity party? Really, it doesn't matter. It hurts no matter what it is. Now, it seems it's time for me to find some solutions.

I also would like to make a postscript to this entry. After a fairly good crying jag, I am impressed to note that my new eyeliner has clung tenaciously in place. In case you girls would like to know, it's Maybelline New York liquid eyeliner (brown black). And for those of you who know I sell Arbonne, I love their products, but their eyeliner sucks.

My life as a Medicare health insurance saleswoman has just begun. I can see already I'll have to work on not bringing these people, their faces and their troubles "home" with me. Here is a sampling of the people I've met so far.

Jodie, a 71-year-old black man, former member of a gospel trio that traveled nationwide. Jodie has no plans for Thanksgiving or Christmas. His apartment is neat but plain, the carpet flat, with no padding. His furnishing are modest and sparse. "My family and friends are all dead. I buried every one of them," he told me. "Some days I wake up and wished I hadn't. But what cha gonna do? You just go on." He smiles as he says all these things, then shrugs.

Mary Ann, 65, tall, emits a sense of grace and pride. Widowed a little over a year ago in Texas, she moved to Denver to be near her daughter and niece to escape the memories in the rural home she'd shared with her husband for all those years. She lives in a neat, older brick home and owns a Chihuahua named Taco. From the dining room, I can see into her bedroom and a tidily made single bed. "Across the street, I see my neighbor's brick house. Out back, I see that brick apartment building. Just over the edge of that roof, when the leaves are down, I can see the tops of three peaks." Her eyes are watery. "I miss the life I had. I miss the life I had when my husband was alive and healthy."

David, 48, disabled by a wicked industrial accident in which his apron was caught by a huge saw. His body was sucked into the blade. "I heard my bones breaking. I was conscious through the whole thing." He spent a three months in a coma, a year in a full-body cast and every moment since in pain. His townhouse is decorated in a Victorian theme, lavish and immaculate. David is tall and rangy, made for country and western bars. His loneliness is palpable.

Jorge, 30, disabled in ways I can't see, divorced with a 13-year-old son who has a close relationship with Jorge's ex-wife, almost none with him. His apartment is drab and dirty. Picked-up but not clean. He is overweight such that he has difficulty walking. The only photograph in his home is a framed picture of a smiling boy perched atop the television. "I might get to see him the day before Thanksgiving because he doesn't have school that day." The actual holiday, however, his son will spend with Jorge's ex-wife. When I ask to see his insurance cards, he has them at the ready. "I have everything," he says, then pauses, and smiles almost shyly. "Well, if I had everything, I wouldn't need you here to help me get this insurance."

The majority of them are women. Women left alone. With only a few words, they give me glimpses of their lives. "My husband left me money when he died, but because of it, my income is considered high. I can't qualify for any assistance. I'm barely making it." "When my husband died, I couldn't afford to live anywhere but here." "I visited him in the hospice every day for two months until he died."

I see joy, too.

One particular apartment complex has amenities I wish were offered here. Every morning, the men and women gather around a coffee pot in a sunny community room like hunters huddling around a campfire. They warm their hands around colorful, coffee-filled mugs. They gossip about the goings-on in the building.

Two of the women I've met there share an apartment. When the others speak of them, they glance knowingly - eyebrows arched - at one another. It delights me; the happy, elderly lesbians enraging their widowed neighbors. I see the two of them later, side by side, pushing their identical wheeled walkers down the hallway. "Do you cover disposable briefs," one of them, Sharon, asks me. "Linda needs those and they're $60 a month! Can you help us with that?" "Yes," I tell them, and they happily sign.

On another floor, women play pool on a chilly winter afternoon, chattering cheerfully in Spanish. They turn at the sight of me and shower me with bright smiles. It is my third visit to this building and already, nearly every face is familiar.

And I see humor.

On the third floor of this same lively building, I meet Deborah and Joe, a black couple who share a smoke-filled apartment. Joe is just starting his day when I arrive. He is out of sight, down the hall in their bedroom. "Boo," she yells. "You stay in there, OK? That insurance lady is here." He mutters something unintelligible in return, his tone mirthful. "Never mind how old she is," Debra retorts. "You stay there, you hear? Don't you come outta there nekkid!"

Everyone -regardless of their lot in life - smiles at me, and my name is rarely spoken. To them, I am simply "honey."

Each time one of these people signs an application, I make $70. I feel alright about this when I sign Joe, Debra and the other vivacious elderly I've encountered. Yet I leave the homes of the sad and lonely, signatures in hand, with little joy in the commission I've earned. I am helping them financially, yes. But that, it seems, is all I can do, and it feels so insignificant. It does not ease their heartbreak, fill an empty room, or bring back a loved one.

What I need to realize, and fast, is that the assistance I offer them truly is significant. It makes a positive difference in their lives. And in terms of what I can and should do for them, I must accept that that will have to be enough.

Since I first posted this last week, I met Francis. Francis merits an edit to this blog entry because Francis is happy. She is a skinny, tiny black woman with a big smile, thick glasses and white curly hair springing out from her head. She is 88, turning 89 in 10 days. Francis lives with her daughter in a brick house. With obvious difficulty, she stands to shake my hand, beaming all the while. When I tell her she looks happy, Francis nods.

"I am happy," she says. "And I eat right and do everything I can to stay healthy."

Her daughter, divorced and delighted about it, laughs. "She's something, I know."

I leave their home feeling light and realizing the key is seemingly simple, yet impossible for some to reach. The happiest old folks I've met live with someone. Be it their crazy husband, their lesbian lover or their daughter. They are happy because someone is there to share their days with them, to love them no matter how late the hour in their lives.

It shows me yet again how much we all need one another to thrive. We were designed as social creatures, no matter our age. Isolation, I think because it's an unnatural state, makes any of us sad. Isolation without hope, the kind I see on some of these individuals' faces, must be the loneliest place of all.

A friend of mine (who I hope is reading) told me years ago she plans to buy an island of her very own when she's older. "You, me, Nancy, Chris, all of us will go live there and be Golden Girls."

The first time she said this, I found it an odd idea. Why was she even thinking about this kind of stuff? We were in our 30s and my job then didn't bring me into regular contact with seniors. I gave little thought to aging at all, my own or anyone else's.

But now, as I'm suddenly seeing life from new angles -- and peering down the hall of life toward my still distant but steadily approaching senior years, Laura's idea doesn't sound so strange. In fact, it sounds mighty damn fine.

It's Sunday morning. My neighbor just had an orgasm.

I'm happy for her, really. Just as I was happy for my Colorado Springs neighbor when she had hers - complete with headboard banging and an impressive array of vocalizations. That was a townhouse with depressingly thin walls - depressing because I owned the place and had no clue until then the construction was so shoddy. (Or that my seemingly demure neighbor was so ... lively.) This is an apartment and yes, the walls are thin, but hey, it's not unexpected.

Still, it's salt in the wound for us partner-less apartment dwellers. Bad enough our solo status means most of us are forced into a housing situation that falls short of ideal. On top of it, the relatively poor quality of our boxy little units allows us uncomfortably easy access to one another's private lives.

Like the couple across the hall. I suppose they make love on occasion, but from what I hear, most of their time is spent making war. I've met these two people. I know their names. I know they have recently relocated here from Seattle. I know she is one of the most gorgeous women I have ever seen. I know he's in some fairly serious legal trouble.

I know this because, a month or so ago, they left. Newspapers piled up around their door. A note from the apartment complex was slipped into the crack of the door. Then another, this one taped to the door. A third, rolled-up and ominously-legal-looking notice was tucked through the hole in the knocker handle.

After a couple of weeks, I was sure they'd skipped town. Snuck away, most certainly under the cover of darkness, without paying rent, stopping their newspaper delivery or paying bills. Surely, that was what the rolled-up piece of paper was all about. Wasn't it?

After a day or two, that notice began calling to me in seductive tones. "Read me," it said. "C'mon, they're gone anyway. You know you want to." I shushed its papery voice.

Two more days worth of papers landed on the already formidable pile. Finally, I gave in. I pulled the notice out of the knocker handle. I unrolled it, and scanned it, quickly. It was a subpoena. I recognized my neighbor's first name. His presence was demanded in court, courtesy of his employer. My face burned with late-rising embarrassment. I rolled it up, slipped it back into the handle and ducked into my apartment, shame on my heels.

Still, I could not bring myself to feel completely guilty. They were not coming back, and this legal dispute surely was the reason. Mystery solved. Besides, once a reporter, always a reporter.

The next morning, every newspaper, notice and scrap of accumulated paper was gone. I heard the unmistakable babble of a television. I heard voices. They were home.

Oops.

So I know more than I should. But what I mostly know is that they argue, often.

All this wafts under my closed apartment door from behind their closed door. Even for the non-curious, it would be hard to ignore. For someone without a sex life, or much of a social life, it's impossible. Still, I do my best - unless the TV selections are truly pathetic. Which is, pretty much always. And then, the way I see it, you might just as well just mute the thing.

Anyway, a snippet from last weekend: First, indistinguishable, angry words from them both. A door opens, with such quick force the knob shrieks in protest. "... makes you happy!" she shouts, her voice thick with tears and rage. The door slams. A grocery bag slaps against the lobby door. Footsteps heavy with anger echo through the stairwell as she descends the three flights to the parking lot.

She's leaving him. Again. Perhaps she goes to friend's house for the night. But she's back the next day. Already, in just the three months during which they've lived across the hall from me, they've established a sad pattern.

I see her the next day, unloading something from the trunk of their car. I smile and wish her good morning, ask how she is without even thinking about it. She blinks at me. Her beautiful face is twisted with sorrow. "Good," she says. But her smile is as weak as the early November sun.

All things considered, I suppose the sounds of my other neighbor should give me hope about the state of relationships. But if I had my druthers, she would have a sex life just like mine. Quiet, and imaginary.

I can't suggest that to her because, well, it'd be sort of rude, and potentially awkward. But even more so because I don't know her. I can tell by her, uh, voice, that she's young. I also know she has a cell phone alarm that jolts her - and sometimes me - to life every morning. That's all I know. After this morning, that's all I want to know.

Unfortunately, I'll now be eying every woman I see in our third floor hallway with suspicion. That woman looks awfully damn happy. She's sort of even glowing - on a bitterly cold, November morning, for God's sake! Could she be the one? Perhaps I'll pose a seemingly innocent, passer-by-variety question, such as, "This weather's amazing, huh?", with the hope that she'll confirm my suspicions by responding, "Oh! Yeah!" just as she did today.

No, never mind. I really don't want to know.

Nevertheless, I now face a dilemma, because if the Colorado Springs experience is any indication, this is just the beginning of my auditory woes. I could move my bed. But the placement of windows and doors throughout the room makes that difficult; there really is only one logical spot for the bed. I could pound on the wall next time and ask her to conduct her recreational activities on the couch. I could buy ear plugs. But I dislike the little wax collectors intensely. Or, I can just take the passive aggressive approach, as I did in Colorado Springs. And hope they break up. Soon.

Sunday, my son and I went to Goodwill in search of new clothes for his rapidly growing body.

I pulled out a pair of pants for his consideration. They were khaki, with pleats, perfect for semi-dressy occasions.

Robby shook his head and wrinkled his nose. "Those look like Christian pants," he said.

I laughed out loud there in the store, even though I understood exactly what he meant. I also realized his comment indicates his views on religion are taking shape, and paralleling mine. It made me consider, again, what a strong influence I am in his life. The thought is humbling, and frightening. Because the truth is, I don't know anything.

I know there are more wonderful Christians than hateful ones, but that the latter are, sadly, the loudest. I know that most religious people are good and deeply kind. What I don't know is how they can be so sure.

To Robby, I have said only that clearly, something beyond comprehension created this world. I believe we are all here to make life better for one another, and that we should wring as much joy out of it as possible. Beyond that, I cannot venture.

I have never had a conversation with God, nor do I know anyone who has. And so, I wonder, how can anyone profess to know the answers?

Who knows that God believes homosexuality is abhorrent? If heterosexuals and homosexuals were created by the same hand, how can one kind of love be alright - even sacred - and another not? Isn't love, no matter who we love, a powerfully positive force? Who knows that those who do not share the beliefs of one specific religion are damned to hell, while others will ascend to heaven? How can anyone know there is a heaven or a hell?

I cannot get my arms around this. So instead of practicing a faith, mine is in people, the good I think is at the core of us all, and the ability we have to transform our worlds.

It seems to me New Life Church pastor Ted Haggard - whose teachings are among the reasons I left Colorado Springs - made a prison for himself. He preached that homosexuality was wrong. He found his urges repulsive. He hated that part of himself because he believed it is an abomination. For him, there is no escape.

I don't understand the attraction of homosexuality. But I also don't see how the current battle for equal rights among homosexuals is any different than the battles fought for equality among women and blacks. How can someone be judged for how they are made - whether it's the color of their skin, their gender, or their sexual preference?

I believe we are born with all these things already burned into our DNA. I suspect any gay or lesbian would tell you the same. Or just ask Pastor Ted, who admits he's fought unsuccessfully against it his entire life.

I wonder how much more peace he'd have felt if he'd accepted himself and preached that acceptance. How many people - so convinced they are repulsive and freaks of nature that they ended their lives - could he truly have saved?