May 23rd, 2006
More than a decade ago, I suddenly found myself living alone. Truly alone after years of living with others. I remember the first night: A friend helped me move the last of my things into my new apartment, even helped me set up my bed and computer ... and then it was late and, despite my protestations that surprised us both, he had to go home. And that's when a crushing weight dropped on my shoulders like a ring of lead-coated concrete.
Alone.
It was so bad that I dug around in boxes until I found a pocket radio, and turned it on to listen to the voices of a late-night talk show. Politics, sports, religion ... it didn't matter to me; I just wanted to hear the voice of someone else to alleviate that bone-crushing exile I suddenly found myself in. The radio helped that night, but there were an uncountable number of similar nights stretching into my future.
And because of that loneliness without foreseeable end, I clambered for company with somebody ... anybody. And I met someone who, as Tom Lehrer would say, was "a girl scout who was similarly inclined." A quick, almost arbitrary meeting became a brief sojourn from our loneliness, and though it lasted exactly one month, the resulting affair of two very different people (save the one commonality of loneliness) seems in retrospect like it lasted only a day ... two days maybe, certainly no more.
She's long gone, not even living in this country any more, and I moved on to other people, who themselves became people of my past.
The thing is: I would never in a million years ever again climb into someone else's life just because I perceived their loneliness and thought it made us compatible. And, besides, I wouldn't ever feel that deathly desperate agony of loneliness myself again, either: I worked out what it is, and it has nothing to do with other people ... and the proximity of other people could never assuage it.
These days I like my alone time, but I also value my together time. I know to separate them, and I acknowledge the value in having both in the right proportions.
* * *
Even in those times when I have been alone, living with maybe a cat only, or even just myself, I have acknowledged that there is a great pleasure to be found in having the mental space to swim around in my own thoughts. I once heard a strange little quote from Jules Renard: "I'm never bored anywhere: being bored is an insult to oneself." Hmm ... well, if you can get past the smugness and self-importance of the tone of that, there is a grain of truth in it for me. I've found the same with loneliness.
The kind of loneliness that drives you into some stranger's arms is not a feeling of loneliness so much as a desire to patch a perceived hole in your own mind. Often we are attracted to people because they have something we think we need in ourselves.
I'm afraid of the devil and attracted to those who ain't. - Joni Mitchell And the truly tragic part of this is that we never find what we want in others, because that missing part can only be found through self-realisation. What we think we are missing really does exist in ourselves ... but until we are alone enough to find those missing pieces, we will always seek disaster in others.
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