IgnoredOne
Well-known member
[As a preface, I should note that this was originally supposed to be more coherent, but I've decided to leave it in its rambling state to honor to the more honest and natural feel of aloneness. And in a way, as a testament that even when someone has had a lot of experience dealing with loneliness, it still has its pangs.]
I needed to review two stories for the magazines that I had been working for - neither of them truly were worth much acclaim, but I wanted to give them their fair critique. My editor, of course, would prefer a fast one. There was her email, already: polite, but insistent. I told her that I was get it done by tomorrow, and hoped that would stall her enough. Having also completed some practice review of the computer examination that I've been planning to take and with midnight being in full bloom, I decided to set fifty minutes so I could nap and return to my studying.
I wasn't feeling particularly sleepy, but neither was I incredibly livid. So I put 50 minutes on the timer, shut off the light, and lay back on the bed.
These are dangerous moments - when the whirl of work and the occupation dies down long enough for me to hear the chatter of my soul. It is when I realize, vividly, that I'm alone on my bed. It is when loneliness strikes. Earlier, I had been working out and had taken off my shirt in the heat. Now, I felt cold and pitiful(and was remarkably glad for the blue jeans); the moonlight filtering through the curtains seemed to mock me, exposing the truth of my aloneness without the comfort of darkness. I huddled behind a blanket.
No one loves you, my soul whispered.
I hugged the folds of my blanket, partly hoping to lose myself in the illusion that it was a body in my arms. It didn't work, wouldn't have. I tried, anyway, staring at the curtains.
No one ever will love you.
I don't need to depend on my happiness on someone else, I tried to tell my soul. Furthermore, I can't, I reasoned. You can't expect to depend on the choices of something or someone you can't control. Therein lies the path to ruin.
I felt tears on my cheek, wiped them away with the blanket.
Lying to yourself gets you nowhere. You want to depend on someone. You need to be vulnerable, and feel safe doing so.
I tried, I told it. I tried so many times. It didn't work, and there's no reason to believe that it ever would. Such is life.
What do you fail so much where others seem to do so naturally?
Its us. Its who we are. Its a fact of our aspect, our appearance and there's nothing to do about it. I might very well go through life without being loved. The word "twenty-three year old virgin" flicked through my mind. It was not pleasant.
What's the point of life if you resign yourself to unhappiness and hopelessness?
Lack of happiness isn't necessarily unhappiness, I try to point out.
Then what is lack of happiness?
Life. Life is worth something, right?
No answer.
Life is worth something, I repeat, mentally. My audience is silent to my attempts to convince myself, and I realize that I'm neither getting any sleep nor feeling any better on bed. I slip out of the bed, kissing the blanket before I do so, hoping that it was someone.
The lights come on. I find, to my disappointment, that I still have almost 20 minutes left on the timer. I also glance at the Christmas letter from a girl, and against my better wisdom, open it to look at it again. There's a handdrawn flower in it, along with the well wishes. She was talented - I could have loved her, though she never would have felt the same for me. She told me that.
You always liked artists.
I'm one, too, I remind my soul. A writer is no less of an artist though he works with words and sounds instead of lines and curves. It gracefully concedes to me.
I might as well be productive with my remaining time somehow. So I find my way to the kitchen, put a kettle on the stove, and light the propane underneath it.
Dark teatime of the soul?, my soul remarks mockingly.
I almost smirk. I'm still cold, so I find my way back to my bedroom, specifically the closet, and pick out a shirt. Its a button shirt with cubic patterns and is far too dressy and formal for this time of the day. But no one is going to see me anyway, so with the help of the bathroom mirror, I put it on.
I stared at myself in the mirror with a bit of difficulty. My hair was messy. A brush happened. It wasn't messy afterward. It occurred to me then, as it has often, that I wasn't ugly, though neither was I particularly fond of myself.
You have a certain doll-like aspect to you, all neat like you always are. Except at the eyes. There's something else about them.
What do the eyes say?, I ask. I'm not sure that I like doll-like, either.
Intensity. I don't know with what - or maybe you don't want to admit what it is. I don't know.
Neither do I.
I return to the kitchen, the kettle and a waiting teabag of Earl Grey to match the cup of hot water. I decide against milk, favor sugar, and wonder for a moment if I still have any honey left for the tea.
Honey was Miss B's favorite thing in the world.
That's where she got her nickname from.
You really, really loved her.
I try to deny.
She was an artist too, and a ballerina. She wouldn't have loved you either, though you did everything.
The ghosts never stop haunting me, I answer. Besides, the writer Scott Fitzgerald married his ballerina, Zelda, and it ended with one insane, and the other dead. I need not pine overmuch for that.
Yet you did pine for her. And still do, it reminds me.
Such is life, I answer.
I return to my bedroom desk. Five minutes left on the timer.
The pages of my notebook have turned; perhaps the wind had gotten in earlier. Now, through the last semi-transculence of the last unfilled page, I can see my handwriting in the pages behind it. Automatically, my fingers close around a pen and almost as automatically, I twirl the pen in a full spin in my hand. It had become a habit, by now.
You thought to visualize your improvement that way, that if you could learn to spin a pen, you could prove to learn anything else.
It was partly true, I note. I improved in all things.
I turn the page and look at the writing. On the top half, there's a "grouping" technique for a character I used in a story. It was a particularly fond character of mine.
She was based entirely off Miss B. You tried to honor her there. And you wrote another story for her. It did make her happy - but it didn't make her come any closer to loving you.
On the bottom half are these words: "Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it." "Freedom to succeed is also freedom to fail." "Freedom is a relative, and not an absolute concept."
I must have copied some of those words from someone I read - they're far too beautiful and eloquent to have been mine. My mnd searches for a source.
John Updike. American novelist and essayist. From a collection of his essays called More Matters.
Ah yes, I note. They fail to resonate with much meaning for me now, though I suppose they might in the morning. I feel alone. There's still one minute on the timer, moving inexhorably.
Do you think that any of this will mean anything, ever? Or will it, like the loves you've had, be both beautiful yet meaningless? That all the effort in the world, all the accomplishment and successes that you've thought you've fathered - none of this will ever bring you what you've wanted, what you've needed? What will you think, then?
My answer to my soul is the same as always.
Such is life, I tell it with finality, while the last seconds of the timer tick away.
I needed to review two stories for the magazines that I had been working for - neither of them truly were worth much acclaim, but I wanted to give them their fair critique. My editor, of course, would prefer a fast one. There was her email, already: polite, but insistent. I told her that I was get it done by tomorrow, and hoped that would stall her enough. Having also completed some practice review of the computer examination that I've been planning to take and with midnight being in full bloom, I decided to set fifty minutes so I could nap and return to my studying.
I wasn't feeling particularly sleepy, but neither was I incredibly livid. So I put 50 minutes on the timer, shut off the light, and lay back on the bed.
These are dangerous moments - when the whirl of work and the occupation dies down long enough for me to hear the chatter of my soul. It is when I realize, vividly, that I'm alone on my bed. It is when loneliness strikes. Earlier, I had been working out and had taken off my shirt in the heat. Now, I felt cold and pitiful(and was remarkably glad for the blue jeans); the moonlight filtering through the curtains seemed to mock me, exposing the truth of my aloneness without the comfort of darkness. I huddled behind a blanket.
No one loves you, my soul whispered.
I hugged the folds of my blanket, partly hoping to lose myself in the illusion that it was a body in my arms. It didn't work, wouldn't have. I tried, anyway, staring at the curtains.
No one ever will love you.
I don't need to depend on my happiness on someone else, I tried to tell my soul. Furthermore, I can't, I reasoned. You can't expect to depend on the choices of something or someone you can't control. Therein lies the path to ruin.
I felt tears on my cheek, wiped them away with the blanket.
Lying to yourself gets you nowhere. You want to depend on someone. You need to be vulnerable, and feel safe doing so.
I tried, I told it. I tried so many times. It didn't work, and there's no reason to believe that it ever would. Such is life.
What do you fail so much where others seem to do so naturally?
Its us. Its who we are. Its a fact of our aspect, our appearance and there's nothing to do about it. I might very well go through life without being loved. The word "twenty-three year old virgin" flicked through my mind. It was not pleasant.
What's the point of life if you resign yourself to unhappiness and hopelessness?
Lack of happiness isn't necessarily unhappiness, I try to point out.
Then what is lack of happiness?
Life. Life is worth something, right?
No answer.
Life is worth something, I repeat, mentally. My audience is silent to my attempts to convince myself, and I realize that I'm neither getting any sleep nor feeling any better on bed. I slip out of the bed, kissing the blanket before I do so, hoping that it was someone.
The lights come on. I find, to my disappointment, that I still have almost 20 minutes left on the timer. I also glance at the Christmas letter from a girl, and against my better wisdom, open it to look at it again. There's a handdrawn flower in it, along with the well wishes. She was talented - I could have loved her, though she never would have felt the same for me. She told me that.
You always liked artists.
I'm one, too, I remind my soul. A writer is no less of an artist though he works with words and sounds instead of lines and curves. It gracefully concedes to me.
I might as well be productive with my remaining time somehow. So I find my way to the kitchen, put a kettle on the stove, and light the propane underneath it.
Dark teatime of the soul?, my soul remarks mockingly.
I almost smirk. I'm still cold, so I find my way back to my bedroom, specifically the closet, and pick out a shirt. Its a button shirt with cubic patterns and is far too dressy and formal for this time of the day. But no one is going to see me anyway, so with the help of the bathroom mirror, I put it on.
I stared at myself in the mirror with a bit of difficulty. My hair was messy. A brush happened. It wasn't messy afterward. It occurred to me then, as it has often, that I wasn't ugly, though neither was I particularly fond of myself.
You have a certain doll-like aspect to you, all neat like you always are. Except at the eyes. There's something else about them.
What do the eyes say?, I ask. I'm not sure that I like doll-like, either.
Intensity. I don't know with what - or maybe you don't want to admit what it is. I don't know.
Neither do I.
I return to the kitchen, the kettle and a waiting teabag of Earl Grey to match the cup of hot water. I decide against milk, favor sugar, and wonder for a moment if I still have any honey left for the tea.
Honey was Miss B's favorite thing in the world.
That's where she got her nickname from.
You really, really loved her.
I try to deny.
She was an artist too, and a ballerina. She wouldn't have loved you either, though you did everything.
The ghosts never stop haunting me, I answer. Besides, the writer Scott Fitzgerald married his ballerina, Zelda, and it ended with one insane, and the other dead. I need not pine overmuch for that.
Yet you did pine for her. And still do, it reminds me.
Such is life, I answer.
I return to my bedroom desk. Five minutes left on the timer.
The pages of my notebook have turned; perhaps the wind had gotten in earlier. Now, through the last semi-transculence of the last unfilled page, I can see my handwriting in the pages behind it. Automatically, my fingers close around a pen and almost as automatically, I twirl the pen in a full spin in my hand. It had become a habit, by now.
You thought to visualize your improvement that way, that if you could learn to spin a pen, you could prove to learn anything else.
It was partly true, I note. I improved in all things.
I turn the page and look at the writing. On the top half, there's a "grouping" technique for a character I used in a story. It was a particularly fond character of mine.
She was based entirely off Miss B. You tried to honor her there. And you wrote another story for her. It did make her happy - but it didn't make her come any closer to loving you.
On the bottom half are these words: "Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it." "Freedom to succeed is also freedom to fail." "Freedom is a relative, and not an absolute concept."
I must have copied some of those words from someone I read - they're far too beautiful and eloquent to have been mine. My mnd searches for a source.
John Updike. American novelist and essayist. From a collection of his essays called More Matters.
Ah yes, I note. They fail to resonate with much meaning for me now, though I suppose they might in the morning. I feel alone. There's still one minute on the timer, moving inexhorably.
Do you think that any of this will mean anything, ever? Or will it, like the loves you've had, be both beautiful yet meaningless? That all the effort in the world, all the accomplishment and successes that you've thought you've fathered - none of this will ever bring you what you've wanted, what you've needed? What will you think, then?
My answer to my soul is the same as always.
Such is life, I tell it with finality, while the last seconds of the timer tick away.
