Loneliness

I feel alone. Perhaps I am alone. I wonder if everyone is alone. I’d like to think they are. Maybe those who don’t feel alone arrive at this state of relative comfort by blanketing their loneliness. They disguise it with bodies, voices and various other distractions. Their loneliness lingers underneath a mess of soft quilts and sweet nothings. It’s always there though, never fully subdued, merely muted and briefly forgotten. For a short moment though, every night before each person goes to bed, they plunge into a cold abyss... They drift and there is no one there to catch them (even if they’re sleeping next to someone). They don’t know where they’re going when they fall asleep and no one can tell them that their uncertainty is not to be feared. It is to be feared. They may never wake up. Besides the pain, dying can’t be a vastly different experience. When you’re asleep everyone you know and 'seem to care about' evaporates. They can arise in dreams but they’re not the same. They’re incomparable. They can become corrupted, controlled, or negative space in a matter of seconds. In our waking lives, family and friends are like a soothing sitcom. In excess they dull your mind. Through blanketing your loneliness via family and friends you can also blanket your individuality. That is, cover it up or smother it. You run the risk of burying original thought. You don’t accomplish anything of real value, except of course if you consider blanketing other people’s loneliness valuable. It probably isn’t. ‘Being with people’ cannot be called an accomplishment any more than going to the bathroom can. Humans are fundamentally social. Despite our romantic unwillingness to admit it, we carry on relationships of utility. We’re with each other because we have to be, but we somehow never quite meet. People in love seem to produce fleeting glimpses of pure connection or a spark that triumphs their perennial isolation. The problem with this though is that it never lasts; at least not in its monumental, original form. Perhaps people who blanket their loneliness to the point at which it dulls their mind (or curbs their accomplishments) are inclined to do so partially because when they’re armed with the arsenal of loneliness they simply have no target. That is, they have nothing worth doing while they’re alone. Perhaps that emptiness is so frightening that it becomes the motivation to safely conceal their loneliness. They'd rather lose themselves in a flurry of familiar conversation or physical intimacy than face their hollow selves. So it’s good to be alone. It fosters and signifies depth. Loneliness is like an archer's quiver…but what is a worthy target when people are removed from the picture? Where does the lone archer shoot his arrows? And why?

written by anonymous