[1264] Alone Together

I've heard 3 or more ardent expressions of feeling deeply alone from people on social media, either in earnest short-form, meme, and in real life over the last week or so.

The dumb thing to do would be take those expressions personally. What it does though, is make me wonder what precisely they mean.

These people have significantly broader social networks than me. You can see the immediate flow of support of their respective comment sections. These people have families they're significantly closer with than I'll ever be. The only thing they have in common, besides being my friend, is they are single women.

I had a discussion with one of them recently about what it meant to be alone. The idea of not being “partnered” even if, by the numbers, we spend more time together than one imagines couples in a traveling-salesman or military situation might get. We’re not “official,” but we’re also not children who live and die by porous or arbitrary definitions in order to enjoy time together.

My head is drawn towards the idea that a story is, truly, more compelling than “reality” will ever be. Especially as you get older, your standing reality in any moment is what’s racing through your head, the aches in your body, and the asks from the world that isn’t remotely concerned about your opinion. You, in your own head, can be an incredibly lonely space in its infinite capacity to dog you.

Most of my cohort are old enough now to have occupied decently “responsible adult” and “serious person” positions only to be faced with the high school inane absurdity and chaos inherent in everything. For some reason we like to trick ourselves into thinking we’re the only ones who can notice in spite of literal thousands of performers and pieces of art that synthesize and connect our experiences.

But it’s not the same things as “feeling like” someone “really loves” you, right? It’s talking across purposes to suggest “I’m right here” or “We literally could have plans this weekend” or “You can always call me.”

It doesn’t seem to matter if it’s based on evidence. It doesn’t seem to matter if it will last. You just want to believe, which I think is the shape of the hole. If you can’t pacify it, you stick drugs and alcohol in it, or you internet troll, or you compulsively work, or you get creepily invested in a hobby or personality affect, or you jam a god or something spiritual inside.

But I think it’s deeper than that, because I’m someone who often feels “isolated,” but not necessarily “alone.” I seek out connection all the time, often from people who almost feel like they’re actively running from even getting lunch every 6 months. Learning late in life that I’m probably more autistic than not became it’s own kind of “ah ha” moment, and that’s a kind of solidarity you can only find with those types. Being “high-achieving” has always carried it’s own kind of baggage, but I’m finding it downright amazing to have found a job where my boss is of the same ilk.

I have a strong painting-like memory of a morning where me and my 5 or 6 roommates were all doing whatever we were doing in our respective zones of space across the living room and kitchen. We are all “alone” together. The sun was hitting the space just right. Everyone seemed contented. It was so unique and so encompassing, I’ve written about it before. It was kinda like the same “click” that happens during a good shroom or acid trip, where the purpose and flow of being conscious together makes more sense than you could ever fully articulate.

To my mind, that reality is available to us right now, today, as often as we choose and practice it. Every time I write, I’m reaching out. Usually it’s into a space where all I can receive is immature armchair irony psychology, but it’s a reach nonetheless. For decades now, I’ve felt my general effort to connect functionally rebuked 95% of the time. I’ve had a dozen or so “friends from college” live an hour or less away from me for years, and it wasn’t until Brandy moved back from Florida that I’ve had anyone to regularly spend time with that wasn’t my dad.

It just feels like an exhausting act. It reminds me of when I could tell that a girl was clearly “more into me,” (which is the wildly wrong way to state it, but I think articulates the point) than I was her. No, I don’t want kids and marriage, but it doesn’t mean I never want to talk or see you again if we stop fucking around? But this high-stake either/or game gets played because we’re apes first, and people murder over jealousy more often than money.

I’m not exaggerating, I’ve probably offered to go to any type of food at any time of day, invited or offered to pay for any kind of show, low estimate 500 times across dozens of people over the last let’s say 8 years because that’s when I started working “real jobs.” That’s about once every week. It was way higher when I was younger and we were partying every weekend or had little else to do each week in school or I had the bills paid with drug studies.

What are people? What have people been for 8 years? Busy. We’re cool, but they’re busy. There’s so much going on. They haven’t found the time for fill-in-the-blank. They’ve love to catch up, but. They’re just so tired. They have plans that land precisely at the same time!

Now, there’s meet-ups and ways to put yourself out there, but also, that’s it’s own kind of job, just like endlessly dating tends to mount discouraging experiences.

This sense that we’re in “information silos” stoked by the hateful algorithms I think is a natural extension of our practice of being too busy. We’re too occupied. We’re too…everything. We don’t choose anything for ourselves and just sing the song of the oppressive box we’re trapped in. Worse, from my view, if you begin to insist that this is empty, nonsense, or at the extremes rude and pathetic, now you license people to, somehow, ignore and distance themselves from you even harder. It’s then as though the shaking of the last vestiges of hope for reconnection was the final goal.