I am lonely.
I am so painfully, bitterly lonely. I feel it like the cold in my bones that just can't be shaken, layer after layer.
Loneliness lingers. It fades away just enough from moment to moment, just enough to let you know how terrible it is once it returns.
Loneliness is not just being alone. It is feeling isolated. It is feeling abandoned. It is feeling trapped.
When I think of being alone, I think of this bit from The Lord of the Rings, the Two Towers.
Eowyn: Leave me alone, snake!
Wormtongue: Oh, but you are alone. Who knows what you have spoken to the darkness, alone, in the bitter watches of the night, when all your life seems to shrink, the walls of your bower closing in about you, a hutch to trammel some wild thing in? So fair, yet so cold like a morning of pale Spring still clinging to Winter's chill.
Eowyn: Your words are poison!
Eowyn, as usual, is right. His words are poison. But that doesn't mean that they don't feel real to her. That doesn't mean that they don't bounce around in her room after her leaves.
So now I sit here, in my little basement apartment eating macaroni and cheese shaped like Spongebob characters and try to hard to evade this. I catch up on my favorite tv shows. I texted at least 6 different friends. I even called my mother at 10:30 pm and woke her up.
This is no one's fault. It is no one's burden. It is not anyone's responsibility to make me feel the opposite of what I currently feel.
Nights in the basement are particularly hard- the awareness that I don't know a single soul in my entire borough makes me shrink down to an eighth of my actual size.
I thought back as to how I dealt with this during previous moments similar to this one.
Studying abroad in Greece. Transferring to the University of Delaware. Days when I felt accomplished just by putting on shoes.
In Greece, I wandered and I spent money. I went in any which way hoping for the best, and buying any small thing along the way to make me feel better. A snack, a tea, usually a new pair of flats or a scarf. I took photos, I sang song to myself. I would get lost on purpose. I told myself that loneliness was an adventure. I found out towards the end of our trip I often wandered to what was considered the "bad" part of town. That was my first true experience of feeling insignificance and hopelessness in such a way. I coped and it ended. I rarely remember that part of the trip, until now.
Delaware hurt me so.
I had such incredibly high hopes and fell so far down. Friends, please don't move anywhere during the month of February, nothing good can happen in February. As I've stated too many times, I have trouble making friends. It was so much worse when I was 19. I filled my days then with trips to Goodwill and the antique shop, baking lots of anything, bubble tea dates at T'Licious, wandering in and out of the boutique shops I could never afford. I held as many jobs and worked as often as I possibly could, excusing my inability to have friends on my hectic work schedule. And this is not to say that I suffered a constant loneliness. I had lovely, dear friends who were so good to me and brought such joy into my life. But that's the thing about loneliness. On the nights I couldn't find those friends, even if it was just to have a Netflix marathon night, I shrunk.
It is no secret that New York has not been my friend. Maybe it is a lesser secret that I haven't tried as hard as I could to make it so. Every day there is somewhere that I can be, something that I could do. I have a slight amount of friends now that I could call to twice as often as I do. But I do not have it in me to attend things alone. All I do is remember that I am alone. That I couldn't procure on other human to interact with. Yes, I could go to the Met at look at something new each day. Yes, I could sit on a park bench in Central Park and watch the world happen before my eyes. And when I have the stamina, I will. Being lonely is exhausting.
Sometimes, it is so perfect to have a tea and a book and shade by a tree. And I love those days and those moments. But I love those days and moments because the rest of my life is filled. Filled with a variety of things and people that make my heart want to explode and so moments of being alone are not equated with moments of being lonely.
You don't have to remind me how dramatic this all is. I'm well aware.
With all of this said, I know that how I feel isn't real. Well, it is real to me, but it isn't what is real. People continually come to my rescue and lavish love on me in a variety of ways. I am comforted, listened to, and prayed for. I know that this is true and I am sure that as soon as the sun is shining again and I don't have to stay within 5 inches of a space hearter I will remember this more. I am sure that as soon as I have a healthy career and can feel proud of myself that I will remember this more. I am sure that as soon as I have a community, an apartment, roommates, and lifestyle, a culture, I will remember this more. But until then, it is extremely difficult. And so I write blog posts that will make me cringe later. I write blog posts that I don't know- and can't know who reads. I won't know that if the next time you see me or not you'll have read this and pity me. Or want to be my friend. Or cringe for me because it is so awkward to spill your guts to the blank world of the internet.
I do know that this will save me for tonight. To say how I feel and be unashamed of it (for now). To send out this post, knowing that it will be read and therefore I will connect with someone. That someone will read this and feel the exact same way, and tell me and we will know that we are alone together.
