Loneliness (Warning: Self-Pity Contained Herein)

It's been a long time since I was lonely. Really alone lonely. The kind of loneliness that doesn't seem to have any edges, but expands until it dominates your entire emotional landscape. The kind of loneliness that I ran into the arms of my ex-husband to escape. The kind of loneliness that I did escape for 10 years, but which has now resumed its place in the center of my soul, opening its arms to gather every feature of my kingdom-soul into itself.

And this time around it's harder to avoid. Back then, when I was alone, I had hope. I knew that I was young (19), and that I had plenty of time to find just the right person to keep the loneliness at bay. Now? Well, let's just say that I'm not 19 anymore, and there are many, many things that are different, and not just the fact that I no longer cling to optimism like a bloody limpet.

I have to say that reading about love and infatuation and excruciatingly-drawn-out declarations of "fine amor" in medieval romances isn't helping. I realized just how terminal the loneliness had become last night when I was walking home, and found myself making up a song that was deeply pathetic. Here are a few lines, for entertainment:

I, I miss your arms at night.
And I, I miss all the talks we had.
But I, I don't miss all those nasty fights,
The way we hated each other at times.
I, I miss your laughing face,
And I, I miss your goofy pranks.

And so on, and so on, and so on. Now, a caveat. I do not typically make up pathetic songs like this. If I make up songs, they are typically stupid and slightly inclined to hysterical humor (not hysterical in a can't-stop-laughing sense, but hysterical in a so-desperate-to-not-let-the-(fill in the dark emotion here)-eat-me sense.) Nor are they long enough to accompany me over two miles.

It seems like it should have been obvious to me just how lonely I was, but despite a few phone calls with my mom where I told her I was lonely, it wasn't clear to me that I was deeply, achingly lonely, like I haven't been since I was so desperate for love that I would do incredibly stupid things (but that's a story for another life). But the realization brought some recent behaviors into focus. Like, it might explain why I've sometimes found myself lying awake at 3:30 in the morning, with tears rolling down my face, with no real clue as to why I'm crying. Or why, when I'm home, I keep movies or Scrubs or Kingdom or Dharma and Greg on almost continuously, to the point where there is a constant noise in my apartment, even if I'm in the other room, and not really paying attention. Or why I have very long conversations with my cat (although, to be fair, I've always done that . . . except that now I get upset when he doesn't answer me).

I know that I tend to cry easily, but even when I discovered that literally every episode of the sixth season of Doctor Who found me in tears, I didn't make the connection. I just wrote it off to hormones. I mean, yes, okay, it's sad that Rory almost died (again), but the goofy pirate episode really didn't deserve racking sobs. And even the frustration engendered by the simple expedient of identifying which button to push in the old-Amy episode wasn't enough to dampen my enthusiastic sob-laden response to Rory and Amy standing on either side of the door of the TARDIS. There is just no reason for me to have cried as hard as I did.

And let's not even get started on music. Merely listening to Limp Bizkit's version of "Behind Blue Eyes" is enough to get the tears rolling, and any version of "Wicked Game" is guaranteed to destroy my ability to approach the day with eyes that don't look like I'm completely stoned. (Oh, look at that. I got started anyway.) As for emotional-roller-coaster songs like Emilie Autumn's "Castle Down" or Rise Against's "Savior" or Linkin Park's "Waiting for the End" or Stone Sour's "Hesitate" - forget it. I can't even listen to them, because then going fetal under the covers is no longer a desire. It's a necessity.

It's why I spend so little time in my apartment. My search for the perfect apartment - for a space where I could be alone, and content, and comfortable - was truly a waste of time. I thought I'd be spending so much more time here than I have. I didn't realize, when I was running far, far away from California and the (second) mess of things I'd made there, that I would be so crushingly lonely that I would spend all day on campus just to avoid being home. I spent something like three hours in the grad lounge on Thursday, talking utter nonsense with anyone would listen (poor people), because I could feel the emptiness of my apartment waiting for me. All my books and pictures and knick-knacks and cat haven't been able to fill the emptiness.

The hardest part has been dealing with the quiet certainty that has lodged itself in the back of my mind, and won't leave, like all terrible lodgers. It's the certainty that I really will be alone for the rest of my life, that I'll never love like that again, that I'll be doomed to either a series of shallow relationships, with occasional moments of happiness to stave off suicide, or to just be alone, with my long-suffering cats, who will grow exponentially into a truly massive cat colony, until I go to work wearing clothes that I've knitted of cat hair. In the daylight, I know this irrational fear for what it is, and do my best to get the lodger evicted, but at night, when I'm vulnerable, he comes back, and settles down again, quietly waiting for me to give up. Parts of me know it's utterly ridiculous, but those parts always lose the fight. I think I need to arm them with something stronger than ephemeral hope, which becomes more and more ephemeral with each lonely night that passes.

This is just utterly depressing, so I'm going to stop now. At least I've realized what's happening, and why a friendly "hello" can be enough to make me cry with gratitude. Now I just need to get a grip on myself, dye my hair orange (because hope is stronger with orange hair), and do proper battle at night, instead of hiding behind trees and boulders.