recent loneliness

Sometimes I am lonely. It doesn’t happen often; I am usually too busy to notice. But it happens sometimes, when my energy level is low, and my defenses are down. A friend turning away when a prettier girl walks up, or when someone in a social circle begins to say something intelligent, personal or relatable and then is cut off by a repetitive mundane semi-humorous quip at which every laughs raucously. These things can spark it. Laughing has its place, but sometimes a small laugh suffices. Sometimes I just want to give a wry smile or a shrug or a tear. Crying has its place too.

Quantities of people have nothing to do with loneliness. I have many almost-friends, with whom to pass the time. I am involved and socially active. And I don’t think they know one thing about me. Not really. I have now mentioned Kevin’s name three times to one or another of these almost-friends. I wonder that it should take five months for the biggest part of my life to surface. I don’t want to talk about him with them. I don’t want the conversation to turn into another riotous orgy of joke-telling and half-meant innuendos. I am tired of innuendos. I think I would be less put off if these people pulled any of the tricks they suggest. I am tired of hints becoming the substance of a person.

Hope brings on loneliness. I feel it most often when I want to be real-friends with these my almost-friends. Many of them know the lurid stories of my family life, and I feel like their knowledge is my blessing, like a burden lifted from me. But still my life is not real to them. My parents are a running gag, and my sister the tale of caution. We are like celebrities in a tabloid. I can tell them anything shocking and they will accept it, but I cannot tell them anything real. I feel like I am stretching for something just out of reach. I am sad to think how close we come to being friends before the chances wane.

Sometimes I get angry with the revelers and I want to slap their laughing faces. But most of the time I just want to know what they are thinking. Who are they, and why am I seeing only the lurid exteriors instead of the human substance? I am sure I could love them, but we don’t give ourselves that chance.

These are the times when I am desperate for the Friends I know well and love best. I fear the ring of my phone almost as much as I fear its perpetual silence. I hate hearing my obnoxious ring only to see the screen light up with an unknown number. My hopes mock me just a little. I cannot reach out and make my Friends a part of my life right now, because I am busy spending time with the laughing almost-friends. My filthy hypocrisy leads to my loneliness, and the fact that I feel almost overwhelmed by the thought of lengthy narrative phone calls, in which lives are recounted not experienced together.

I guess I am wishing for three things: I wish that my almost-friends and I could become real friends; I wish I were back in any place where I had real friends with whom to be real; I wish that I could talk more with my best friend, that he were here.