Loneliness and I
I’m all alone. I’m wide awake in the lonely witching hours, the world sleeps, but I digress. Loneliness is a terrifying concept. Constantly reaching out for a hand, knowing the world won’t reach back and when it does, Those hands are covered in oil.
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I don’t think it is so easy to cast off loneliness as just a bad thing, isn’t there some beauty in being
alone? Sitting in an empty space with only your ideas, unfiltered, uninhibited by the participation of other people? If that’s the case are you even alone? Surrounded by a sea of ideas, words and concepts Am I alone? Yes.
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I think about killing myself a lot, not that I would actually do it, as a person without a faith, to kill myself to escape loneliness seems a tad bit redundant, leaving one lonely plane for an even darker one. But it’s still nice to know I could if I wanted to. I’m sitting in my bedroom surrounded by purple bars of light that act as my prison cell, my sentence is 21 to life solitary confinement. Visiting hours are sparse and usually brief.
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It’s snowing outside. imagine how lonely it is to be a snowflake falling from the sky with a bunch of things that look nothing like you, so close to be your counterpart but just different enough to make it feel like you aren’t one of them, all alone in your category. And then when you hit the ground you spend the rest of your life in crowded quarters. All alone. But comforted that at least everyone else is. Speaking of snow one of my favorite things to do is drive fast through snow at night by myself. To see the snow blow past my windshield reflected by the beam of my headlights. It reminds me of the screen saver on an old big block computer. You know the one, empty space, a black screen with white specks floating by. I think Microsoft (or whomever created the thing) wants you to believe your floating through space but I think it was a psychic image of my future, alone, rubber on black top, music at the lowest fidelity, and me hoping someone doesn’t shake my mouse. Being alone isn’t the worst sometimes.
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I think the loneliest job you could have is probably a Radio DJ. Think about it, aside from the fact radio is considered a dying media outlet (I personally don’t believe this) And then what is your job, talking alone in a room. There is only an assumption that someone out there is listening, and unlike film or tv you aren’t essentially recognized unless your voice just happens to pass into someone’s ears. So, when I sit alone in the WJJW station playing my Lo-fi I can’t help but feel alone, because I can’t even guarantee there’s someone receiving my wavelengths, I think I’ll stick with a live audience from now on. But part of me wishes I could see where my sound travels to and whether or not it falls on deaf ears, maybe in I stick my head in the radio tower I’ll end up in someone else’s Subaru
in the snow, I guess that’s me shaking someone’s mouse though.
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“I did acid once” (says every person who did acid once) but I have to talk about it. I was sitting in a circle of people of mixed sobrieties but I was fucking gone, out of this world, Hanging with Lucy across the universe (to be as on the nose as possible) I said something and wrote it into a poem “There are 4 people in the room but I’m the only one here” Ever sense I said that I’ve had an impossible time feeling like part of a room full of people. Loneliness is so ingrained in me that without prompting I have convinced myself that I’m lonelier in a room full of people than by myself. What the fuck is wrong with me.
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God has a terrible sense of humor if he exists. Listen to this, he created us to need other people, BUT also created us to be aware of our own individuality and feel the need to act as said individual. So, when you are alone you’re depressed because you’re failing to socialize like your brain wants you to. And the moment you are finally spending all of your time with someone you feel a dread that you have failed YOURSELF.
If me and God were hanging from a cliff, which one would I save first?
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TIM: I like being alone. Because when I listen to music and it really fits, it makes me feel like the cameraman of my own movie. And each encounter after I start out alone is immediately more dramatic, I can practically see the big black bars cut my vision in thirds as the backing track begins to play and I see you across campus and I think “Damn, I’m the only one in the theater”
■ I wish I was insane. When I think about the things that quantify loneliness in my head the only solution is to develop real split-personality disorder. I could spend the rest of my life listening to the voices in my head, at least they get what it’s like to be lock inside my Cubs hat.
“this town ain’t big enough for the two of us” I yell at high noon in the dusty drag of my mind, I can imagine myself staring down this other personality as we fire at each other bullets zoom through my synapses as my real self would know that. As much as it sucks being alone, I’d rather not have someone snooping around in here.
I feel like at this point in the essay I need to clarify something.
I Do not need anyone to be happy.
I breath! I am alive, and I matter. But I am alone, and I am lonely. No matter how many friends I have and no matter how much people tell me I’m not alone and GOD I love them with all my heart, but they aren’t here with me. Simply people whose timelines intersect with mine. I am a supersonic cosmic piece. I am here when the battles lost and won, when the hurly burly is done. Alone I stand amongst my thoughts, each one bashed and bloodied and I twitch, covered in blood and ready to vomit. You can’t turn to the police when you’re the one mentally abusing yourself.
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Do you think that each episode of a TV show is only one day in a year of the life of those characters?
I hope so.
Imagine that one season is a year in the life of a sitcom character (hence why each season has a Christmas or holiday episode) and they only bring in the cameras and record the interesting things. This is why when you look at the TV and see these people having all of these relationships and this social drama ALL the time. But for the other 341 days of the year these people live lives alone just like we do? Just wait for the season finale of Planet Earth, you’ll be okay.
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TD 649 NB Boulevard WhereverIam, USA 01234
To Whom It May Concern:
It has come to my attention that I may not be the only person who feels the way I do so I thought I would write to you, yes you. Are you ever driving? Is it snowing where you are? Do the seats recline in the movie theater of your mind? Mine do too. How silly of me to assume that no one would be reading this. Fuck I had my closest confidants blowing through my prose and I’m grateful for those, that bear with me while I whine about being alone with them in the room with me. But what about YOU, you You, yOu, yoU, you got what I need. If you’re are reading this. Are you as alone as I am?