i have been struggling immensely with loneliness, with feeling alone in life, which which isn’t the same as feeling alone. this doesn’t mean that i have an absence of people in life — i have many good friends — but what i have wanted so badly for pretty much the entirety of my adult life has been someone to do life with.
the one thing i have consistently envied people is their people. like, i envy people their partners, their families, their people, the ones who are there to carry the daily humdrum of life, go to doctors’ appointments together, kill bugs for; i envy people who have someone to call on their way home and say, hey, i’m at the market, do we need anything? can i pick up dinner? i envy people who have a shoulder to cry on, someone to run errands with, and, on a more sentimental note, hope for and plan a future together. the older i get, the more i think that life is about the banalities, not the extraordinary, and i envy people the boring day-to-day, the lack of need to generate their own noise because there is someone there creating noise just by existing in the same space, the same life.
after my event in DC, i was so tired from stress and not getting enough sleep that i just wanted to go home, but i lay on that bed in a hotel room that felt weirdly damp and wondered why when there was no one waiting for me at home, just silence. what was there to go home to?
there are a few topics i don’t like to talk about with certain people.
i don’t talk about living with suicidal depression with people who don’t live with it, and i don’t like to talk about the pains of chronic singleness with partnered people. i find both experiences to be kind of like talking to white people about racism, ultimately frustrating, counterproductive, and alienating, regardless of how well-intentioned people may be, so i try to keep things to myself as much as i can, until my own feelings bubble over and become unmanageable, which does happen every so often.
for the most part, usually, i’m okay with life as is, able to keep chugging through with work.
dating is a complicated space for me. without really getting into it, i’ve never dated for two major reasons, the more significant one being the body shaming that started when i was a freshman in high school, that broke me down and left me in pieces as a human being, isolating from the world out of a paralyzing fear of judgement and rejection. it’s been a years-long process to break down the toxic messaging i internalized deeply through that decade of being shamed for my body, told that my worth and value were tied to my weight, and made to believe that no one would want to date me, be my friend, or, even, work with me until i could make myself skinny. attach to that that no one has told me that they liked me or were attracted to me, so my personal experience continues generally to prove this idea that i am unlikable and undesirable, so why bother? why care? why put in the effort of making myself painfully vulnerable and waste time and energy on dating?
and then there’s the second reason i don’t talk about publicly. i very rarely talk about it privately, too; i think i’ve only talked about this with maybe one or two friends.
and, so, life is lonely, but i have learned to live my life alone. over the last twenty years, i have learned to dine alone, go to movies alone, travel alone. there is freedom to this kind of life in that i am only beholden to myself and have immense flexibility in the decisions i make — i can very much sit in law school and try to move to korea once i have my JD to work for a company that does business in the U.S. without having to convince a partner to come with me. i can travel in the meandering way that i prefer without a schedule, eating what i want when i want and switching up plans last-minute as i so desire. before i started school and was working remotely, i could go to los angeles last-minute when my parents had health issues, to take them to appointments, cook them meals, and generally be around to assist as needed. there is tremendous freedom that i do appreciate about my solo life.
sure, sometimes, the pain of chronic solitude does become too much to bear, but, in general, i have figured out how to be alone. i lean on friends when i can, while being aware of the limits of friendship and trying not to be Too Much or a burden. i keep myself open to meeting someone, though i don’t actively waste time on dating apps or emotions on the effort of something that will come paired with tremendous pain and loss. i carry the awareness that being in a relationship isn’t going to be some magical fix without challenges and issues of its own, that it is important and valuable to be able to be happy and content with my own company, and i do make the daily effort to practice that contentment.
some days are obviously easier than others, and i do go through seasons as i have this summer when i acutely feel the pain of being alone in life. for the most part, though, i know that i am not alone-alone, that i have good people in my life, that my loneliness might be a constant companion but doesn’t define me. it is okay to feel how i do, and, yes, there are moments when i do let myself wallow and be miserable and sad, but i can have my moment, process the feelings, and keep going on with my life because, sure, i might not have a partner, but i do have a full life, though we could argue that it’s mostly full because of how much i work. where creative outlets like photography fit in the blurry space between work and hobby in my brain is up for debate.
(these were shot on my plastic camera with fujifilm 200.)