I was milling about a function a couple nights ago, a photo exhibit and panel discussion on addiction and recovery curated by an addict in recovery and his partner. It was held at a well known art school and my gut told me, after looking at the crowd, that the majority of the people there were academic colleagues and/or patrons of the arts. There were a few outliers who were visibly not in those ranks and were probably more connected to the subject/s of the exhibit. You get to know your people. You know the signifiers, like trying to look inconspicuous while measuring the surroundings and the crowd and keeping track of the closest exit. My people…

There was a gentleman among the ranks of the former whose behavior and words have hung on me for a couple days now, like the smell of cigarettes in a suit jacket after a night out. I’d say he was older, unless of course I was standing next to a mirror, in which case I’d be reminded that I myself am older. He was moving about in the crowd striking up conversations with people familiar to him, and it was clear he was there with his own agenda. He brought up the subject of loneliness and the nature of loneliness and some related project he had been or was currently working on. It wasn’t so much that he wanted to discuss the nature of loneliness as that he wanted to present himself to as many people as possible as a man with a project and ideas and deep thoughts. I recognized him as a man who was struggling against invisibility. His pet topic was clearly personal. He was lonely.

You would think that would be enough to make a human connection with him. You would think I could walk up to him and say, hey man, I know about loneliness! Let’s share some thoughts! That’s the thing about loneliness though. It’s rather a selfish or egocentric emotion. He wasn’t there to listen. He was there to be heard, like he was hiding his loneliness behind this exploration of loneliness he was doing. And to be fair, my primary reason to connect would have been to be heard. What can we tell each other, any of us, about loneliness? It comes down, for the most part, to this:

I hurt.

It all clung to me though. His low-key desperation to be a center of attention at an event that had little to nothing to do with him, was he even invited or did he just happen upon it? It amplified something within me too. It brought to the surface a feeling somewhat contrary to his. I didn’t want to connect with either group I recognized (there may have been others). I don’t know that I could have anyway because I was caught up in a sense of ‘apart-ness.’ Feeling insecure or unable to connect I enter a cycle of rejection. I’m going to emotionally buffer myself and remove myself from the… from the… intent… the work. I haven’t quite put a finger on it but there were feelings.

Loneliness is a weird three-headed beast though. There may be more heads but there are three that I know of. One is the inability and hopelessness and despair. One is the sweeping existential loneliness. A purgatory. Isolation. The third is a sense of resentment and betrayal related to people you know. Given my choice I’d take the middle head. The two bookends feel deeply personal. The first is the fuck-me head telling you that you’ll never be good enough. The third is the fuck-everybody-else head that as it turns out, strengthens the first as it feeds. Ain’t that a bitch. So given the dearth of choices, I’d take the numbness behind Door #2.

Fact is, I’ve rambled and shambled through the jaws of all three (and maybe more) in the last several months, so I’m well acquainted with the topic. I’m perhaps as familiar with it as I am the subjects of the exhibit. How then do people address the topic of loneliness and share ideas? Were I less grumpy and resentful of this interloper the other night for trying to platform himself at someone else’s show I might have asked him, what does it feel like to you? Who else have you spoken to? What did they say?

I did hear him later in the function positing to a hostage that perhaps people become addicts to ease loneliness. That’s not unreasonable, but I don’t know that it could ever be fact born. I don’t know how it starts but most addicts are lonely people. They could very well have become lonely as their addiction progressed. Or both?

Where am I with the topic though? Of loneliness, that is… I think I was surprised by the degree to which it had turned to feelings of betrayal and resentment. I knew it was there, certainly. The scale of those feelings though came as a surprise because I’ve been busy and distracted by other more day to day getting by and getting ahead activities. There are quiet moments though where the ‘fuck-you’ head has been happily feeding. It’s a place I haven’t been for quite some time. I honestly thought I’d outgrown that, at least to a large degree. It’s right there though, with not quite as voracious an appetite as it used to feed with, but it’s never left.

Breaking it down, I need to address this shit.