Only the Lonely
Party of one (party of two, Lauren Carter, if you're reading this)
I am not a Sports Person, but I have been loving the international slumber party vibes of the World Cup. (If you haven’t been watching this unfold, Anne Helen Petersen has a great highlight on her IG with the best Toks about it.)
It’s a beautiful reminder that human connection can be so easy and fun if we let it. That we are still allowed to seek out joy even — and maybe especially need to — when things feel the bleakest.
That there are still so many people in this world waiting to be known and loved by us, and us by them.
We are not so alone.
Party of One
I’m an only child. I’ve spent most of my adult life living alone, unless my human-sized dog counts as people. I’ve never been married1 and probably have cheese in my fridge that has lasted longer than some of my relationships. (Cheese also doesn’t send you unhinged text messages at 8:30 am on a Sunday2.)
I would have been a much lonelier child if I hadn’t had my best friend and my closest cousin, both eight months younger than me. Instead of being a latchkey kid, I went to the neighbor’s house, where I fit seamlessly into the age gap between their two oldest daughters and the youngest.
Without those relationships, I probably would have turned into the kind of only child monster most imagine when they picture one: someone incapable of compromise or sharing, a person used to always getting their way because they take being the focus for granted.
Instead, I’ve been loved and challenged by these adopted sisters my whole life; truly seen and known. Able to be my weirdest self and pick up where we left off, even if it’s been years since we last saw each other.
I learned about a different, deeper kind of loneliness later in life.
The kind that hits when you realize that someone might love you, might do their very best by you, and still not know you. Worse still, to realize they do not care to. That is how you can find yourself in a room full of people — or a room full of family or next to someone on a couch — and feel utterly alone.
Launchpad
I could not wait for college; I loved high school, and I loved my friends3, but I saw college as the start of my own life. I remember after sophomore year thinking…okay, that was fun! I….still have two more years of this. Ha ha oh no.
I was also a huge nerd4, so I could have graduated a year early, but I didn’t want to be 17 in college. (I have always been distressingly practical.) The cultural zeitgeist pushes high school so hard as the best time of your life, but I always saw that as Uncle Rico Sad. To peak at 16? Fucking. Bleak.
I get that it’s the narrative because high school is a more universal experience than college, despite the boomer culture telling us that was the only way to Have A Career And Be Somebody. But if you’re lucky, you have another 60+ years to live. And you are stuck on things that happened before your frontal lobe was even fully formed??
I didn’t exactly drastically change my life; I went 2.5 hours from Houston to Austin, and here I remain. I’ve spent the years since I arrived watching the skyline get engulfed by increasingly taller buildings and building friend groups that are all various flavors of ride-or-die. I have never been cared for more than by my friends amid the unrelenting chaos of life.
The times I’ve felt the loneliest in my life haven’t been after a breakup or facing down Valentine’s Day as a cat lady cliché in my 20s. It has been moments like watching The Devil Wears Prada 2 and hearing Anne Hathaway’s character say to the man she’s on a date with — who, unprompted, read her five-part series on a topic that would put most people to sleep and wanted to discuss it — that she’s been in long-term relationships with people who’ve never read any of her work, and realizing that was also true for me.
It’s realizing that you shouldn’t have to ask someone who says they love you to be curious about you. About the thing that makes you most fundamentally you.
That’s the gut punch that makes the person next to you a sudden stranger.
Maintenance Phase
After my last breakup, a lot of my friends made similar comments about me being “chill” or “low-maintenance,” in the vein of “and yet even the little you ask for was too much in the end”.
In response to this, I have decided to become more high-maintenance. I am eschewing the deeply culturally embedded desire to be The Cool Girl™️ in favor of being more like Miss Piggy: not only knowing my worth, but demanding it be paid attention to.
I’ll report back on whether I start karate-chopping anyone who pisses me off !!!
Get Rec’d
What I’m reading, watching, being haunted by.
What I’m reading: I just finished This is How You Lose the Time War, and damn does that book have some raw lines.
What I’m watching: Off Campus is the show I deserved to have when I was younger, about sexual expression and consent. I ugly cried for Baby Sparker.
Reality: “It’s not that the wealthy become evil; it’s that their environment stops teaching them the things that nonwealthy people are forced to learn simply by living in a world that pushes back. When you can buy your way out of any mistake, when you can fire anyone who disagrees with you, when your social circle consists entirely of people who need something from you, the basic mechanism by which humans learn that other people are real goes dark.” When you’re rich enough, everything is free, and nothing matters!!!
Escapism: It’s Neil the Seal Summer, baby!!! Become ungovernable.
Until next time.
A man did propose to me via text message once. We had never been on a date.
HELLO FRIENDS I STILL LOVE YOU WE ARE STILL FRIENDS YOU CAN NEVER ESCAPE MEEEE
I read about astrophysics for fun please invite me to your parties we can discuss the various explanations for the Fermi paradox !!!!
Affirming to know I'm not the only one who brings up the Fermi paradox at parties (how can we not be consumed by this? does anyone think or feel anything when they look at the stars? IS ANYONE CURIOUS ANYMORE?)