I am lonely.
Loneliness isn’t about being by myself—I have no issues there. I like going to the movies by myself, having lunch solo, and running in the company of canines. This issue isn’t about needing to be around other people. I have many great friends in my life. This issue isn’t about self-esteem; I am an exceptional human today. Hell, being exceptional may even be part of the problem.
It’s a lack of connection.
It’s like you’re sitting in a stadium full of people and it looks like they’re all talking and cheering, but you don’t hear a thing. You’re on the 50 yard line, they don’t notice you, and you look right through them.
As long as I can remember, I have been lonely. I couldn’t be cuddled because I was too hot. I couldn’t watch because I made people nervous. I felt like a nuisance, a burden in the way of whatever the people around me were working to accomplish. (Remember, I’m the girl who even sent my imaginary friend away to live somewhere more relevant.) So I isolated, especially into books. Always wanting to be somewhere else, books were the perfect outlet for me. I could go anywhere. I could be anything. (Sing a few bars of Reading Rainbow, I know you want to. It’s cool.)
I also discovered pretty quickly that humor was my way in with people. Being lonely as a child sucked, but as soon as I learned how to make people laugh, I was hooked. For the record, it was Elvis Presley impressions on the playground. Some of you may remember. As always, what I lacked in substance, I made up for in style.
Hours of adolescence were spent walking and rollerblading in solitude. Thinking, not thinking, wishing I felt more connected to people, wishing maybe I would go out on a date before I died, and generally making everything better or worse than it actually was, like adolescents tend to do. Part of me has always loved people, but you fuckers wear me out. Or maybe I wore myself out trying to entertain you all.
And then it was off to college! YES! College, the place where I thought interesting people lived. They talked about interesting things. There was no way I could be lonely in college. No way.
I was surrounded by people—fun people. My roommate was a trip and I met lots of cool people. I also started drinking what seemed like no more than anyone else. The first time I got really good and drunk, it was like the lights turned on and I saw color for the first time. Skipping down 28th Street, laughing with my new friends, I thought that was it. I was light and silly, not serious and worried about politics or the environment. I could actually loosen up and have a good time. Liquid confidence. And the lack of hangover made me think I’d found a better version of myself. All it took was a little alcohol.
But I was still lonely.
The shitty part was that it never felt like the better me again. It’s the trick of it. I sure tried to replicate it. I was a bit of a social director in the dorm. I knew who to call to find out where the parties were, where girls could drink free, all that nonsense. Then the wheels fell off the bus. I’ve tried to write about that night dozens of times and the balance of telling too much and not telling enough is where I struggle. So today I will tell you this, when a young woman in her late teens goes to a friend of a friend’s house to a party, she certainly doesn’t expect it to change her life forever.
I was beyond naïve when it came to guys; I’d never been on a date or had a boyfriend. I was lonely. I was drunk. I remember being dragged up a flight of stairs and not entirely sure what was happening, but realizing I was stuck. The most disgusting thought during the rape was, “Well, you always wanted attention from a guy. Here you go. This is what it’s like.”
Hell of a thing for a lonely girl to think.
Of course, some would say, “Boys will be boys, “ or I was “taken advantage of,” but I’m gonna go ahead and call it rape. There’s like a one in four or one in five chance that you will be sexually assaulted while attending college, so I am gonna go ahead and call it rape.
Some of the party friends caught wind that I’d hooked up with this guy and instead of having the courage to talk about what happened, I made some joke about socks.
They called me Socks for the rest of the year.
They didn’t know.
The shitty thing about rape is that you never leave the scene of the crime.
The shitty thing about being lonely is that you are certain that no one could or will ever understand you.
The shitty thing about booze is that it tells you it takes all the troubles away.
Outwardly, I kept up the funny, party girl thing for awhile. Under the surface, I was raging. I was usually doing too much of something—booze, drugs, food, exercise—whatever. Anything to not have to face myself and the unlovable, unworthy, disgusting, sometimes violent mess of a person I was. By my third year of school, I was starting to push the good people away. The solo drinking got to be more and more of a thing. Isolation was easy; at the core, I had no idea how to accept love, be it friendship or romantic.
The old trick of moving to a new place didn’t help the loneliness and the partying escalated. I picked up a new trick, though—hang out with people who drink and use more than you and not only do you get to feel morally superior, other people don’t think you’re so bad.
Throw in a run of relationships that were never going to work, from the violent one who forgot to tell me that he had a fiancée to the dealer to the ones sick with addiction and it’s no shock that I have not allowed myself to connect meaningfully, intimately with another human. Honestly, I figured most guys were morons.
Having recently tossed myself back into the dating world, I asked my friend, Mr. Hardy, “Do guys typically show up on time and not drunk/high when taking someone out?”
(I should tell you that this happened to me for the first time ever recently, someone showing up on time and not fucked up.)
To paraphrase his response, if you’re 20 and going over to bone, then showing up slightly intoxicated may be acceptable. But a nice girl on a date, that is strange. He thinks I’m fishing in the wrong ponds.
And my therapist agrees.
Balls.
And where the fuck are the right ponds, then?
I used to think that intimacy was impossible, then I thought it was completely fucking terrifying. Now I think it’s a matter of finding another human who is equally exceptional as I am.
Till then, I’ll be lonely.
