This post is about loneliness. It’s about the ways in which I crave it, cultivate it, complain about it, long for its death, and grieve over it.
The truth is, I spend quite a bit of time feeling lonely, and I spend even more time analyzing it, fighting it, and hoping that someday someone will truly know me, love me, accept me, and end that loneliness.
Here I should say that, yes, I do have a handful of incredibly close, loving friends. They all live at a healthy drive’s distance, however, which means that I see them, at best, five times a year. Combine that with a lack of close friends in the city I live in, an absence of an intimate partner, and a traumatic history that includes a lack of meaningful love and inquisitive support from – you guessed it – Mommy, and you’ve got a bonafide Lonely Affirmation Addict on your hands.
Maybe my Original Mommy Sin isn’t so unique (it’s not). And maybe I’m not the only one who fears that s/he is deeply, unequivocally, unyieldingly Alone (I’m not). But that (so far) hasn’t prevented me from creating and wallowing in the narrative that I’m the only one who feels this way. Here I am reminded of David Foster Wallace’s “Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way”: The main character’s greatest fear is that he is existentially Alone, and his greatest delusion, we are told, is that he is alone is his fearing that he is Alone.
I’m also reminded of Father John Misty’s sardonic musings on his latest album, I Love You, Honeybear: “[U]se the ego to nourish pain and establish its singular, unique nature in all cases applicable to you,” he tells us in the liner notes.
Let’s cut to it: I try to give myself the gift of feeling special by convincing myself that I am in fact the only human being on this planet who is not, cannot, and will not ever be known intimately by another human being. And it actually, perversely feels good to believe that I’m somehow uniquely opaque, and it feels good to feel so alone. It’s my incredibly common way of clinging to a loneliness and shame that have become far too familiar and comfortable.
It’s my unremarkable way of keeping you away – because what if you actually did know me? In my fantasy, if I’m vulnerable with you, then you’ll abuse me. I believe that to a certain degree because for an early and formative period in my life, it seemed grimly true. I grew accustomed to it, and the belief was not only habitual but even a prerequisite for safety.
In discussing the extensive and expansive journey that is this amazingly short life, Chance instructed me to “find a formidable other to share that journey with.” He challenged me to find a challenger, someone who pushes me and makes me feel uncomfortable. But wouldn’t I have to give up the fantasy that I’m Alone and the comfortable loneliness that accompanies that fantasy? And then what?
What would I do if suddenly everything was different and I truly believed that I’ve never been alone? How the hell would I deal with that new reality and the feeling that I don’t have it all figured out?