Self-Perpetuated Loneliness

I was originally going to write about fear today, but after receiving an email from a friend and coming to a startling and sad realization, I’ve decided instead to focus this post on loneliness.

I used to think that I was the only person that felt lonely without reason. Reason being something concrete and measurable, like having no friends, or no confidant, or no one who would ask how your day was going or if you wanted to grab a cup of coffee before class. I used to think that loneliness was all in my head, a concept I fabricated when I was frustrated or on my period and craving chocolate and surprise delivery of deep red roses from an anonymous admirer. But now I think loneliness is more like a blanket that covers the entire world, and it really isn’t loneliness at all. It just this big sheet of warmth and comfort that we can drag down from this metaphorical sky I’ve created and wrap around us. It’s like the rainbow parachute from preschool; we all grab a corner and lift it up in the air, hovering underneath it as it rises above us, casting multi-colored shadows over our circle of friends and lovers and families. Sometimes though, just like when we were little kids, afraid of the dark, we cocoon ourselves inside of it, all alone, in the hopes that in someway we will be protected from those who can break our hearts, stain our spirits.

My friend calls it self-perpetuated loneliness. I’d never thought of it that way. Self-perpetuated? That sounds like I’m the only one doing anything wrong. Are you telling me that there is really nothing for me to be afraid of? That I’m purposefully swaddled in these sheets, shuttered out from the world by my own volition? But when I think of it, that is exactly what loneliness is: self-perpetuating, “prevailing without any external agency.” If loneliness were anything else, it couldn’t exist. It would mean that someone else would be in that blanket with you, fighting for the covers, sharing body heat and maybe even conversation. No. Loneliness must be self-perpetuating because it comes from the idea that everyone outside of that blanket is in this together, and only you or I or he alone here is lonely.

Loneliness seems so easy to overcome when I look at it this way. Just share the blanket, right? But it so much easier then it sounds, because if you share, then they know that you are lonely and that there is something wrong with you because how could you not have a hundred friends in this billion person world, and how can you feel isolated when there are parties every weekend and Girls-Drink-Free Thursdays at the bar across the street, and how can you be sad when no one visits you in your fifth floor dorm, when really there is no elevator and what do expect from college kids who have a pool table in the basement?

And it’s not just that loneliness is this creature that nobody talks about. It sneaks up on you. You don’t even realize that you’re in the blanket all by yourself until you’re sweating through it, unable to move. By that point it feels too late.

I know what this is like.

It’s my surrogate suite. My best friend’s suite, and my old best friend’s suite. The four other guys they live with, not my best friends, just normal friends. I drink here a lot. Normally it’s more festive than this, but today I’m sitting on their beer-coated floor, nudging away old pizza boxes, guzzling cheap strawberry champagne out of a Heineken mug. No one who actually lives here is present, but their door is always unlocked and I often wonder if its more for my sake than theirs. They really are good friends. They each have their purpose. Oh god, that makes them sound like utensils, not people. But I don’t want them to be people today, I want them to be objects. I want to sit in the middle of their common room with noise-proof headphones blaring Ingrid Michaelson invisible to them as they walk by. Because this is how I feel. They know nothing of how I feel. They don’t know that the boy to whom I never gave my heart managed to break it. They don’t know that I hate myself for this. They don’t know that I cry on benches across campus. That I cry in their basement. In their bathroom. A part of me wants to tell them this; a bigger part wants them to figure it out on their own. I cry more when I realize they never will.

This was the last bout of self-perpetuated loneliness I had my sophomore year. At the end of that scene I finally wrote a letter to my best friend explaining all of the horrible things I was feeling. He wrote back, and now, even though I can reread what I wrote to him, it just doesn’t seem as painful or serious. We need to share the blanket if we want to stay warm. And we need to know that sometimes people leave our blanket tent, and that doesn’t mean we are alone. It just means that someone else is going to come in and join us.