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.