It’s in the middle of a pleasant, sunny day that it hits me. The sudden despair, the crushing emptiness, a feeling that comes and goes like the tides in the strangest of moments.
Loneliness, I think.
Loneliness is something I know well, not just as an emotion, but as a phenomenon (considering it is what I studied for two years during my master’s degree). Back in the throes of my research, when fellow academics would inquire about my reason for choosing this topic, it took everything in me not to blatantly admit that I was curious to know more about the emotion that has been the most prevalent feeling I’ve experienced since the age of thirteen. No, I would say something more professional, more palatable to a congregation of intellectuals, but the true reason for my curiosity sat within me like a pit.
It’s important to know that loneliness is not the absence of friendship and social interaction. It’s the absence of meaning and quality in relationships, of a sense of social fulfillment. Of course, I know I have meaningful relationships — I have spent my life cultivating communication with the people that I love through letters and emails and 6+ hour video calls, of building community every new place I go.
But the feeling has evolved over the years, and I feel as though there is a gaping hole elsewhere in my life. I can’t shake the sense that something is missing, an integral aspect of human identity, manifested through the lack of romantic partnership.
It seems as though everybody has it, the extroverted and the unassuming, and I wonder why I seem to fall through the cracks every time, every year, overlooked constantly, complimented but left unwanted by the ones I want. It’s funny to think that romance is something I have dreamed of since a young age, reading and writing stories of love and loss.
I always thought that if you wanted something, the universe would bend to your will. Yet it feels the more I grasp onto this concept of partnership, of a companion, the further away it feels. It seems ridiculous to have reached the ripe age of 26 without ever having known the experience of capital L Love, hurtling toward 27 with nothing to show for it other than an extremely dysregulated nervous system. It is hard not to feel like the chemicals in my brain are improperly arranged, or to feel as though I am completely undesirable and unwanted.
I feel like I am holding on tightly to the concept of something that may never materialize, something that feels more surreal and impossible the older I get, the more independent I become, the more jaded I feel when I realize that the love I imagined I would find one day may not exist in this realm of reality. Obviously a relationship is not the end all be all, but romance is a pivotal emotion that makes life worth living, an addictive drug that is the center of every song and movie (and even, on occasion, war).
How do you even search for that kind of high without deciding to snort a line of coke just to feel something? Dating in the modern day and age feels like navigating a toxic system that hinders the ability to create genuine romantic connections, and it makes the whole situation feel like an uphill battle rather than a sweet and fun experience.
I wish I could go out and have fun, flirt and dance with men at bars, yet I can’t help but feel insecure in my own ability to be attractive and cool. I can feign it occasionally (usually after a few drinks) but I know that deep inside that is not what I am. I am introspective and overthinking, and I can’t help but sometimes be exhausted by the carnal pleasure of it all. I want to be seen and known outside of a grimy, sweaty, desperate dark room. I want to be admired not because of the makeup on my face or the front I put up during first impressions, but in my moments of silence, when all of my flaws are laid out on the surface. I do not want to be invited over to somebody’s musty apartment just to be left discarded, a shall of a person, like a plastic doll with pleasure holes and an empty skull.
I enjoy my independence, I truly do. It’s strange how I tell myself I would like to be in a relationship, and yet how easily the fear grips me when a man gives me any level of attention. Because the chance of that person being the “right” one, amongst millions and billions of other options, seems like an extremely low statistical probability– which is not the way to think about it at all, so now we’re both wondering what’s wrong with me, because why am I disregarding emotion and connection for opportunity cost?
Sometimes I wonder if I like the loneliness. If the hope of a certain outcome is better than the actual outcome itself. Sometimes I wonder if I just like doubling down on my own pain like a self-sabotaging masochist; if maybe I gain pleasure in it in the same way it feels so satisfying to press your tongue against an aching, rotting tooth.
And sometimes I wonder if the external pressure gets to me more than my own internal desire to have a man at my side, because truth be told a man’s company hardly brings me joy. Some influences are stronger and more subliminal than others; my family’s inquisitions about when I will get married, my friends settling down with their partners, the tax breaks and financial relief of having a partner who can absorb some of the costs.
There is a part of me that feels like I’m not a real person, having not experienced all of the true emotions in life. I feel infantilized and condescended for my own lack of romantic experience, which is a strange type of irony. I hear anecdotes about couples that lead me to believe they are so codependent that they cannot even shower alone, cannot even do so much as sit in a cafe with a book and enjoy their own company, and yet it seems I am the one that is patronized and punished for being independent. As if I am not the one who has to solve my own problems and buy my own groceries without a single person around to help me open a tight jar.
I know there is not a man out there worth the misery of all this contemplation. A man is just a man, a messy conglomeration of flesh and bone just like me, but with more testosterone and stronger arms. And it is even worse to admit that the man might not be the problem. In fact, I am the problem, me and my own thoughts, the neverending war between mind and body and logic and emotion. I cannot even envision myself being chosen or seen, and fear that I will be floating along in an unfulfilled limbo for the rest of my days.
But I am only getting older, and I am afraid if I do not pull myself out of this cycle, the loneliness might just fester through my bloodstream until it is the only thing I know.
