I've been thinking a lot about what it means to be lonely versus being alone. Admittedly not such a unique thought but what are you gonna do. I'm alone for a good chunk of my waking hours and for 100 percent of my sleeping hours. Evenings and weekends are often a blank slate waiting for me to etch in some last minute plan. Nothing spectacular--a walk in a park, a walk down the main street in my neighborhood, staying in and reading a book. I don't know. I feel OK about doing stuff alone but it's mostly because if I didn't I'd just steep in my own juices sitting in bed, watching Daria.
I vacillate from feeling righteous about being alone to feeling weak about being lonely. When I'm righteous the world is mine. Doesn't anyone realize the greatest gift they can give themselves is to be comfortable alone? To need no other bodies and minds with whom to interact? When I'm lonely though my skin feels itchy and my breath quickens. I don't have any friends. That's about the only line running through my brain.
I'm not so sure what makes the difference? Does loneliness suffocate me on an "off" day? Perhaps I'm not as comfortable with myself as I'd like to presume. The matter of choice certainly comes into play--it's easy to relish an evening in when I've turned down other invitations or if I'm just "in the mood" to be alone. When I'm alone and I simply don't want to be but there's no other option...I guess that's when I become frantic for another body to share space with.
I recently joined OKCupid and it doesn't exactly help matters; the place reeks of loneliness. Everyone's doing the Internet equivalence of shuffling their feet, writing a message cuz what the hell that's why I'm here, then radio silence. Or a message back! And then a terrible or at best mediocre date. The feet shuffling kills me.
And I always feel a slight hint of shame creeping up around the edges when I sign on and read the messages, browse the matches, and judge judge judge judge judge judge. My self consciousness fires off in a million directions--when was the last time I was on? I can't look at this guy's profile again or he'll know I'm interested (??? yes I know that's the point ughhh) why do I sign on so much? I should be signing on every other day (impossible). And it's fruitless so far. I've barely messaged anyone. Someone's profile was pretty impressive (genuinely funny, good taste in writers, smart guy) but I'm scared to message him because I don't quite find him attractive. So now I am (have always been?) a shallow bitch. Cool!
(I'm constantly reminding myself I still felt a heavy
loneliness even when I dated someone--a wet and saggy security blanket I
carry around like a child)
Last week I read Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself and there was a lot of talk about fiction as a remedy for loneliness:
"There's a certain set of magical stuff that fiction can do for us...one of them has to do with the sense of, the sense of capturing,
capturing what the world feels like to us, in the sort of way that I
think that a reader can tell 'Another sensibility like mine exists.' Something else feels this way to someone else. So that the reader feels less lonely."
No doubt I underlined and starred those wise words of DFW. I've garnered a new fervor for reading over the past few months and I imagine it wouldn't have happened if I had less free time spilling out all over the place that needed sopping up. I turned to Middlemarch for comfort and relief when I felt helpless and just plain sad. Feasting on Geek Love during my weekend afternoons when I was just plain bored.
Middlemarch was a turning point book for me, which seems sorta contrived since there's a lot of new hype around it, but whatever. It was the first time I gasped while reading because yeah my everyday thoughts and emotions and my fucking traits, which always seem like a heady blend of mundane and intensely personal and snow flake-y, were be translated into sentences so eloquently and effortlessly constructed. I had to take a break from reading and suck in a few good gulps of oxygen, letting it seep out slowly. It does make a person feel less lonely.
Temporarily, though.
But then, I guess if I really think about it, if I really put my back into it, everything we do is a temporary fix to stave off loneliness.
Oh well.
