DOUG EICHER
NOTEBOOK
The Loneliers1/1/2019 It’s hard to describe unless you’ve felt it, but it’s even harder to forget once you have. It’s that dark heaviness; that dull, throbbing ache that settles in like a cloud of monarch butterflies on an oyamel fir tree in Mexico. You can usually distract it for a while, but it seems that you can never truly outrun it, and, when it settles in to roost, it gets all over everything. It’s quiet enough to sneak up on you, but strong enough to knock the wind of out you once it does. It can be the worst of enemies, but it becomes familiar enough to almost seem like a friend. I’m talking, of course, about one of the ficklest and most peculiar of human emotions: loneliness.
By definition, loneliness is basically the desire for people, especially in their absence. The weird part, though, is the fact that it actually seems to have very little to do with the presence of others. In fact, it often plays its doleful clarinet the loudest in a crowded room. I suppose, if we’re honest, a better definition would not be a desire for the presence of others, but for their comprehension of ours. Because, you see, everybody wants to be known; from the poorest third-grader in a trailer park to the wealthiest executive in New York City. We all want that sense of belonging; that sense of being known and understood by someone else. We want to be known fully; not just the parts of our hearts that we keep bright and well-swept and stocked with champagne, but the darker parts, too; the parts where we’re afraid to go; the parts stacked full of dusty boxes that were nailed shut for a reason, where we could almost swear we can hear something breathing in the dark. But, it goes even deeper than just being known. After all that, we desperately want to be told that we are accepted and loved; not just in spite of all that stuff, but, at least partially, because of it. I’m sure we’ve all felt it from time to time, but, when it needs a place to crash for the night, it seems like it has a few of our numbers on speed-dial. I’ll call us the “loneliers”. We’re the ones that tend to be a bit more prone to it, that have trouble just turning off the lights and hiding behind the couch when it knocks. No matter how busy we get or how well things are going in our lives, it follows us like a shadow just below the water that comes to the surface when we’re alone on a long drive or trying to drift off to sleep. Ironically, it actually tends to make it a bit difficult for us to interact with the one thing we desperately need to send it packing because it tries to convince us that we’re probably not really worth their time. If you’re a lonelier, I’m afraid I don’t have a cut-and-dry answer for you, mostly because I haven’t really figured it out myself just yet. One thing I have found, though, is that loneliness seems to be quite intimidated by gratitude. Unfortunately, though, gratitude is the one thing that is probably the hardest to do when your lonelier name tag is showing. I suppose, though, that’s probably because gratitude and loneliness are so similar and yet, so different; a bit like the opposite poles of a magnet. For one thing, they’re both more than just passing emotions; they’re ways of life. For another, while the one involves almost an obsession with our problems and our situation, the other is basically a fascination with what we’ve been given; specifically, the people we’ve been given. Because, you see, that’s really what it all comes down to: loneliers need people, too. We might tend to forget that when our dastardly friend pays one its dark visits and we might even try to avoid them when we feel it most, but that’s when we really need them; maybe not just to whisper truth to us, but to give us a chance to invest in someone other than the one we’re so inclined to pity. If you love a lonelier, don’t give up. I know it might seem a bit intimidating as to where to start, but, as in crocheting and moon landings, the simplest of things are usually the most important. Despite the fact that we might seem like we’re avoiding you, we really do need you. We might need you, however, in a different way than you would think: not just to pity us or to invite us to your birthday party, but just to crack open that basement door and let us know that you’re there. It may seem too simple but, after all, that’s sometimes all it takes for us to begin to recognize that those stories we can’t seem to stop telling ourselves are nothing short of tall tales.
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