city girl (F.W.Murnau, 1930)
"Guess one place is good as another. It's all a wash-out if you ask me."
I've never been an adult before, so maybe it's always been like this, but I've never seen so many people complain about being alone before. Just the other day I logged onto a social media site (yes, *that* one) and the first thing I saw was a friend of mine complaining that they can't handle being alone anymore and asking people for advice. Naturally, because it's the internet, everyone's going for the joke. But they're serious, you can feel it. Even though this person wears their feelings behind a veil of detached irony. Hey, it's the internet. Everyone else is doing it.
Now there are a lot of things that I don't have, and lord knows I sure am capable of complaining about things I don't have, but being alone is not a pain that I know. For one reason or another 15 was the last year that I spent alone, and, to be honest, all the years prior to that were spent alone too, but I think they were probably meant to be spent alone. There's something weird about pre-teens going out with pre-teens, dressing up and going through the motions of a relationship. It looks like they're acting out scenes from Bugsy Malone (Alan Parker, 1976) with their badly applied make-up and their combed hair. Children dressing up and pretending to be adults, which is somehow extremely different from adults dressing up and pretending to be adults (because, let's be honest, we're all pretending). It's like when a friend of yours who doesn't smoke has a cigarette - something about the way they look and hold the cigarette seems, I dunno... funny. Anyway, all of this is besides the point. The point is that I don't know what it is to be alone anymore, but it's a daily existence for some people. Such as this person on that popular social media site.
For a moment I thought about writing something, even though it's been many months since I last used that social media site, and I'd really rather not have broken my streak for something so... asinine. But then this didn't feel asinine. Sure, this person (perhaps I should just drop all the pretence and say 'he' - we all know it's a man) was making light of it, but it was clear that his feelings were running deep, and aren't we all supposed to look out for each other these days? Mental health awareness and record numbers of young men causing harm to themselves and so on and so forth? So yes, I thought about writing something, and no, I didn't actually do it. Not because I didn't care, but because I didn't know what to say. I don't have any tricks to pass on to anyone, circumstance has simply conspired, for one reason or another, to grant me with company all the time. I mean, I would always recommend 'being one's self' but that seems screamingly obvious. Who uses a mask to get into a relationship? Then forcing themselves to hold a mask over their face for the entirety of their relationship? One arm occupied. At dinner parties, in restaurants, when shopping, at the birth of their children? How exhausting would that be? No, far better to wear no mask at all, and then you have both hands free and can help your partner to their feet when you need to.
But what good would writing 'be yourself' on a social media site be? And anyway, I scrolled down and other people had already said that.
But perhaps 'himself' is the problem here. Perhaps who he is is someone so repugnant to others that *that* is the root of his loneliness? It's a harsh thing to consider, but you have to consider all possibilities.
In that case, don't be yourself? Maybe? Maybe there are people who are forced into wearing a mask for their entire lives for reasons like this? Now I'm not comparing this person to Jeffrey Dahmer, but Dahmer almost certainly had to spend sections of his adult life wearing a mask. So while not being as extreme a version as Dahmer, perhaps there are people out there who need to keep elements of themselves hidden from others? I dunno. I'm just playing devil's avocado here.
So sure, this guy has a dilemma, and yes, I'm sure it carries its own pain to it - but I'm far more concerned with my own pain, so get this.
Yes, I'm not alone. Yes, I'm quite fortunate. Yes, there are people out there who dream of not being alone anymore. But what do you do with a dream once you have it? What do the two of us do now? The short answer is 'spend the rest of our lives together' but there's something in that that gnaws away at me, and it's the words the end.
What happens at the end, if all goes well, is that one of us dies and the other lives out the rest of their life alone. That is what we, humans, or we, society, call the happy ending. 'And they lived happily forever after until the end of their days'. And that's how the stories end, but to be truer to life perhaps what we should do is continue that sentence so that it reads '...at which point one of them died before the other one, creating a nightmare experience for the survivor where they had to deal with the corporeal physicality of their dead partner, the lack of breath, the gaunt skin, the very lifelessness of the person they loved, and had to have that body moved from one place to another, cut open and inspected, and then sewn back up again and then either buried or burned, and the survivor then spent some time [could have been a week, could have been a number of years] continuing to exist but doing so in a vacuum, a hermetic, airless environment where the person they shared all their hopes and dreams with no longer existed, one in which they could never point out a sunset, or a fluffy grey cat, or a hawk taking to the air, to the person who had preoccupied their thoughts and waking hours for the majority of their lives, until eventually the survivor also faced death, and theirs was cold and alone and with no one to hold their hand or weep for them after they died.' Yes. Yes. That's how the fairy tales should end.
What I want, deep down, is for that final character to be me. For my partner to die first. Not so much because I fear dying first, and not in any way because I'm comfortable with the idea of a world without them, but rather because I want to spare them the horror of it all. It's like if you and I went shopping together, or had to collect some wood from a timber yard: I would end up carrying the heavier load because then you're spared the weight of it all. And protecting others from pain, and going through it myself, is perhaps the reason I'm here in the first place.
I've never been an adult before, so maybe it's always been like this, but I've never seen so many people complain about being alone before. Just the other day I logged onto a social media site (yes, *that* one) and the first thing I saw was a friend of mine complaining that they can't handle being alone anymore and asking people for advice. Naturally, because it's the internet, everyone's going for the joke. But they're serious, you can feel it. Even though this person wears their feelings behind a veil of detached irony. Hey, it's the internet. Everyone else is doing it.
Now there are a lot of things that I don't have, and lord knows I sure am capable of complaining about things I don't have, but being alone is not a pain that I know. For one reason or another 15 was the last year that I spent alone, and, to be honest, all the years prior to that were spent alone too, but I think they were probably meant to be spent alone. There's something weird about pre-teens going out with pre-teens, dressing up and going through the motions of a relationship. It looks like they're acting out scenes from Bugsy Malone (Alan Parker, 1976) with their badly applied make-up and their combed hair. Children dressing up and pretending to be adults, which is somehow extremely different from adults dressing up and pretending to be adults (because, let's be honest, we're all pretending). It's like when a friend of yours who doesn't smoke has a cigarette - something about the way they look and hold the cigarette seems, I dunno... funny. Anyway, all of this is besides the point. The point is that I don't know what it is to be alone anymore, but it's a daily existence for some people. Such as this person on that popular social media site.
For a moment I thought about writing something, even though it's been many months since I last used that social media site, and I'd really rather not have broken my streak for something so... asinine. But then this didn't feel asinine. Sure, this person (perhaps I should just drop all the pretence and say 'he' - we all know it's a man) was making light of it, but it was clear that his feelings were running deep, and aren't we all supposed to look out for each other these days? Mental health awareness and record numbers of young men causing harm to themselves and so on and so forth? So yes, I thought about writing something, and no, I didn't actually do it. Not because I didn't care, but because I didn't know what to say. I don't have any tricks to pass on to anyone, circumstance has simply conspired, for one reason or another, to grant me with company all the time. I mean, I would always recommend 'being one's self' but that seems screamingly obvious. Who uses a mask to get into a relationship? Then forcing themselves to hold a mask over their face for the entirety of their relationship? One arm occupied. At dinner parties, in restaurants, when shopping, at the birth of their children? How exhausting would that be? No, far better to wear no mask at all, and then you have both hands free and can help your partner to their feet when you need to.
But what good would writing 'be yourself' on a social media site be? And anyway, I scrolled down and other people had already said that.
But perhaps 'himself' is the problem here. Perhaps who he is is someone so repugnant to others that *that* is the root of his loneliness? It's a harsh thing to consider, but you have to consider all possibilities.
In that case, don't be yourself? Maybe? Maybe there are people who are forced into wearing a mask for their entire lives for reasons like this? Now I'm not comparing this person to Jeffrey Dahmer, but Dahmer almost certainly had to spend sections of his adult life wearing a mask. So while not being as extreme a version as Dahmer, perhaps there are people out there who need to keep elements of themselves hidden from others? I dunno. I'm just playing devil's avocado here.
So sure, this guy has a dilemma, and yes, I'm sure it carries its own pain to it - but I'm far more concerned with my own pain, so get this.
Yes, I'm not alone. Yes, I'm quite fortunate. Yes, there are people out there who dream of not being alone anymore. But what do you do with a dream once you have it? What do the two of us do now? The short answer is 'spend the rest of our lives together' but there's something in that that gnaws away at me, and it's the words the end.
What happens at the end, if all goes well, is that one of us dies and the other lives out the rest of their life alone. That is what we, humans, or we, society, call the happy ending. 'And they lived happily forever after until the end of their days'. And that's how the stories end, but to be truer to life perhaps what we should do is continue that sentence so that it reads '...at which point one of them died before the other one, creating a nightmare experience for the survivor where they had to deal with the corporeal physicality of their dead partner, the lack of breath, the gaunt skin, the very lifelessness of the person they loved, and had to have that body moved from one place to another, cut open and inspected, and then sewn back up again and then either buried or burned, and the survivor then spent some time [could have been a week, could have been a number of years] continuing to exist but doing so in a vacuum, a hermetic, airless environment where the person they shared all their hopes and dreams with no longer existed, one in which they could never point out a sunset, or a fluffy grey cat, or a hawk taking to the air, to the person who had preoccupied their thoughts and waking hours for the majority of their lives, until eventually the survivor also faced death, and theirs was cold and alone and with no one to hold their hand or weep for them after they died.' Yes. Yes. That's how the fairy tales should end.
What I want, deep down, is for that final character to be me. For my partner to die first. Not so much because I fear dying first, and not in any way because I'm comfortable with the idea of a world without them, but rather because I want to spare them the horror of it all. It's like if you and I went shopping together, or had to collect some wood from a timber yard: I would end up carrying the heavier load because then you're spared the weight of it all. And protecting others from pain, and going through it myself, is perhaps the reason I'm here in the first place.