Dear Loneliness,

Yes, you might be the worst by far. Your company is the easiest to come by and the most disagreeable, the most wretched, the most pointless, and the most chronic. But as much time as we spend together, I’ve never really spoken to you directly.

You’re heavy, Dear Loneliness, and, besides, you’re heavy-handed. When I was younger, much younger, I thought friends might relieve your weight. I was wrong. I thought a lover, lovers, might diminish you. I was wrong. You squeeze me when I’m alone, which surprises nobody. But you also bear down on me among friends, with lovers. You’re cold and heartless and relentless. I am the loneliest in crowds. In the morning, in another’s bed, I can feel your sting, as after holding an ice cube, the sharpest. Sometimes comes your chill even in the clamor of a party, even in the company of friends.

What are you? What do you do to me? Relentless, I said. Stuck to me like a shadow. No, worse than a shadow. You catch me at noon. You can stick to me in the pitch. And you’re a trick. You’re nothing but an illusion. It’s as if the fish woke up one morning and was suddenly concerned he was wet. And he worries himself and he worries his life everafter that he’s wet. What I mean is this: We are all fundamentally alone, aren’t we? Traveling through life, we’re all solitary pilgrims. We’re all our own autobiographers writing out our own stories every day. As we want it, we are always alone. There’s no mistaking it. We think and feel and eat and cry and laugh and come together, and, yes, we live and we experience alone.

Or, as we want it, we are not alone. There are people all around us, more kindred probably than we know. There are only a handful of things most people want. There are only a handful of things most people are afraid of. The rest, all of the stuff in between, is accessorizing. And it seems to me loneliness is more of a choice than I’ve been led to believe, than you would have me believe.

I’m not talking about a quantity of people. I’m not talking about collecting friends. I mean more like the fish who frets that he’s wet. We are, each of us, alone; or we are not. It’s more of a question of perspective.

When you sneak up on me when I am with a lover or when I am with friends or when, yes, I am working in the middle of the apocalyptic night, it’s not that I’m alone. It’s not that there is no one around. That is not you’re invitation.

I invite you in Dear Loneliness because I choose to and because, rather than being apart from friends, I am apart from people. Or more exactly, I invite you in because I am dissatisfied. With the world, perhaps. But mostly, you come, and I beg you to come, when I am dissatisfied with myself.

The only thing we really have, the only thing I really have is me. I author my life. And the only genuine excuse for being lonely is dissatisfaction with ourselves, that is, dissatisfaction with myself. So it’s not so much that the fish is wet. He was always wet. And it’s not even the realization that he’s wet. He realizes, that poor neurotic fish, that he’s wet for some other reason. Perhaps he’s arrogant, perhaps he’s pompous, or perhaps he’s just lost.

You, Dear Loneliness, are symptomatic. I’ve seen it get tricky. You are invited in and then you regenerate yourself. You, when you’re welcomed, spawn and spread. And because a person is already plagued, it’s harder and harder to escape. You’re a symptom first and then you’re your own cause. You, Dear Loneliness, are self-perpetuating.

That doesn’t mean you are altogether unbeatable. Regardless of what you say, I know you are a choice, I know you are a trick. Yes, certainly, it’s not as easy as deciding not to be lonely. Dear Loneliness, I will not send you away. One doesn’t cure the symptom. But, as with the fish, I have to learn that I was always wet. And if I can learn to be comfortable in my own skin, you will have no way in. And when I go to parties, and when I wake up with a lover, and, yes, when I am alone, I will be without your constant and heavy company.

SS