What We do to Feel Less Alone

  For the record I'm not using the royal "we" here to count myself as multiple people. Rather I mean to include everyone, which isn't really possible at all, but I'll do my best. This is a list of distractions, a list of art, of solitude, of whimsy, and anything there between.

  - We surf the internet endlessly. We are humble explorers, excited for the advent of a new discovery. We are pioneers in space shuttles, our phasers are mouse-clicks, our exploratory vessels are blog-posts jettisoned into the ether.

 - We brew tea and coffee and espresso, each with its own unique ceremony. Tea has flavorful herbs and leaves that need to be steeped and there's water that needs to be boiled until the pot whistles impatiently. Coffee has rich hearty beans and a slow drip of the coffee machine like an IV with a slow morphine drip. And then there's espresso with its miniature cups, ultra ground beans and industrially steamed caffeine goodness.

 - We watch movies. Sometimes the same films over and over, either when we're paying attention or when we just need some background noise. We watch those same movies until we know every single word of dialogue, creak of a door frame or surprise gunshot that we still jump at.  Or we watch a new and different one every night, trying to catalog them all in the library of our minds.

 - We dance around like absolute fools to music blasting way too loud. When they say, "Dance like no one's watching" this is what they're referring to. There's no one to judge, you can bob your head or head-bang, do the worm, do the twist, or flail as if your body were possessed and if its the ghost of Fred Astaire who's doing the possessing, don't be afraid to tap dance on the ceiling.

 - We bake and cook fantastic dishes. Simple ones or seven course meals depending on our moods. As we cook we pretend to have our own cooking show with our own catchphrases like, "That'll give it a snap!". Every course is beautifully arranged, baked, broiled and seared to perfection. We take a bow and eat after saying "Bon apetit!"

 - We take midnight walks under the stars and kid ourselves that we're real tough, that we'd never be afraid of a fight. Perhaps we don't wear a jacket even though its a bit chilly, because when you're truly tough you don't bother with things as trivial as a bit of cold. And really that's just a bit of false bravery to take your mind off the fact you're alone in the dark of the night.

 - We read books because books can take us to far away lands or two towns over. They give a taste of adventure or the mundane, or both molded together. More than anything books give us a chance to live a thousand times, to experience everything outside ourselves.

 - We build fortresses out of pillows and blankets and chairs and couch cushions. We drag any and all amenities and pets into the safety of the fortified walls of comfort. What's that you say? Building forts is only for children? Tell that to our fore-fathers who settled into wild lands with the safety of a fort. There is nothing more manly and courageous than the construction of a fort.

 - We play video games. We play online with friends unseen but caring. We play solo in lands populated with NPCs. In video games the player is important, the player is the hero endlessly saving the princess/prince from evil. IN a video game we are never truly alone, even if our only company is made of bits and bytes.

 - We work out doing push-ups and sit-ups and squats and thrusts. We sprint and jog and sweat. Sometimes we peddle bikes, sometimes those bikes are stationary. We tone muscles and hone our bodies into machines.

 - We write love letters with abandon. Which are then torn up and discarded into the trash. Then we write more letters and the cycle repeats.

 - We organize vinyl records. First by genre, second alphabetically, third chronologically, fourth by preference, and fifth by a system that would make no sense to anyone save ourselves.

 - We build model train sets. The landscapes are groomed obsessively. Each car is hand-painted. Some cars are named, some are not. Conductor's caps are worn proudly and whistles are blown as each train crosses the station and chugs mightily along.

 - We teach ourselves foreign languages. Romance languages like French, Spanish, or maybe Italian. Languages from far, far away like Japanese or Mandarin or the native language of the Maori. We whisper simple, yet exotic words to see how they feel on our tongues. Using each syllable to plan out future trips across oceans.

The Many Forms of Loneliness

I would venture to say that one of the worst parts about feeling lonely is a secure knowledge that you are absolutely alone in the unique way that you feel alone. I am writing this to break that security. If nothing else, after reading this you can know that you are a little less alone because someone is, or has or will feel the way that you are right now. I think that little bit of solidarity is something substantial to hold onto.

 -There's the loneliness you feel when you're a refugee and you no longer have a home to return to. You spend each day on unfamiliar ground surrounded by paranoia, longing for a place that doesn't exist anymore. You can't return to your house because its not safe or there is no house there any longer.

 -When you're little and don't have many or possibly any friends. This leads to creating wonderful imaginary friends. But the creation of imaginary friends leads to later in life the wistful loneliness for those bygone imaginary friends. You sit wondering, "what did they look like? Were they nice or mean? What are they doing these days?"

-There's the loneliness that comes from all your friends moving away and you're the last one left in town. Do you set off as well or stick around and try to make the new situation work?

-Or on the other hand there's the opposite situation when you have a new career, or school or something else that takes you some place completely different from everyone you know. This means starting from scratch. It means finding new restaurants to go to, making new friends, finding things to do. It means missing all those people you left behind that you keep in your heart. It means calling them in the middle of the night, but hanging up before they answer because you don't want to seem needy.

 - And then there's the loneliness that comes from a rainy day that words can't quite describe. It might be similar to the feeling of missing someone or something that you've never known.

-When you live alone and you burn yourself on the stove, but since you live in solitude there is no one to call you an idiot for burning yourself. So what do you do? You then admonish yourself for being dumb, you knew the stove was hot, you know what heat is, you're not four years old, how could you do this?

-When you are a crazy cat lady. Okay maybe you're arguing that you don't feel lonely at all because you've replaced all your friends with felines. And okay maybe you say you understand cats better than people, which really is understandable, people are crazy. But we both know you were more comfortable at 7-9 cats and now you're up to 15. There are literally cats on top of cats and where are Muffin and Jo-Jo? They've been missing for days now...

-When you're sick as an adult. There isn't anyone to take care of you if you stay home and no one to take pity on you when you're acting pitiful. Except for the most die-hard of firends, no one is going to want to spend time with you while you're sick. That means its just going to be you, a cup of tea, a bowl of soup and any sappy movie you choose since there's no one to veto it.

- The strong arrow of loneliness that strikes straight through the heart when a friend lets it slip that you missed an awesome outing. How dare they all hang out without you? Couldn't they have at least texted?

-The loneliness when you are half a gallon of milk that never got completely drank. You sit in the fridge in denial of your soon to be fate thinking, pleading, "No! Please! Don't pour me down the drain. I'm okay for consumption, I swear. Ignore the smell I'm alright!"

-There's the loneliness when you have a secret crush. You think that person is the coolest in the room/world, but who knows if they even know you're name. You sit each day, four desks away pining for that special someone and the way they wear their hair/skirt/tie/shoes or tell such good jokes or just that thing about them.

-The loneliness of sitting at a table of friends and realizing that after all this time you have nothing in common, or maybe you just feel inexplicably alone. Which is dumb right? To feel alone while surrounded by people, but there you are, lonely all the same.

And to almost all of these scenarios I say, pick up the phone call a friend. It just might turn your day around. Also here's a video that's a little more relevant than usual.

Doctor Dog
Lonesome