I think I might feel lonely now.
In fact, that may be the whole trouble of late.
Part of the trouble, part of the reason I haven’t said anything about it, that is, is that … most every root and reason I perceive for my current state is something that I cherish, respect and would not wish to do anything but support. In fact, support I have, as I have been able.
But I feel the final shoe has dropped.
Congratulations, Zoe and Amy.
Perhaps in a few years we’ll see each other again.
I don’t mean to imply (as Zoe probably knows anyway) that I resent Travis or any shortage of time for other interests that he will help to create, but that I recognise and respect that he is far more in need of your time and attention than I am, and would not deign to take that away from him. It isn’t that “babies ruin everything” as I have heard some say, but that “babies deserve everything.” Especially a loving and attentive family.
I have been losing my friends and “friends” by degrees for years. Some people I have intentionally pushed out of my life – mostly those in the “friends” category, who tended mostly to be people who liked the idea of me being around but didn’t actually want anything to do with me, and certainly didn’t want to grow close enough to me to form actual bonds. Others I have simply allowed to grow distant out of courtesy and respect – when one enters into marriage, one ought to devote their attention to the marriage and all that that entails, work, home, future… and if friendships see reduced connection, as long as the marriage grows stronger, I support it. What else can I do? And when marriage grows into family and responsibility grows in scope, there are inevitable changes. Unless one is rich and callous enough to have someone else raise their children, their children will rightly become the new center of their world – and one callous enough not to love their children in that way is too callous for me to call a friend.
And Zoe has actually made more noble and loyal offers than certainly I feel I deserved, and which clearly were not in good sense, but are recognised as honorable. I would not deign to impose on you as such, Zoe, and I am well accustomed to aloneness.
This is much my own doing. I am not easy to get along with, I do not “suffer fools gladly,” and as I recently discovered myself proclaiming, I have no interest in having any more “unattainable” women (whom I am at all attracted to) in my life, even in the capacity of “friends.” I am as honest and open with people I have just met or never met (as here) as I am with my best and closest friends, and while this apparently drives people away, I have no desire to stop being honest and open. When I learn that a person possesses qualities I cannot accept, I simply put them out of my life.
For example, during various examples in the last year or two, two peculiar (but strangely common) traits that many humans share has come to my attention in a variety of disturbing ways, and I have had to cut off commnication with several people and decrease my views of the entire judicial process as a result. Perhaps you are not aware. First, there are people – a lot of people – who believe that to right a small injustice, a much larger injustice must be made against the offending party. Not just so far as “an eye for an eye” (which, if asked, common people will say is too harsh) but usually several orders of magnitude more severe than the initial injustice or perceived crime. Not a desire for balance and true justice, but for an overwhelming smiting, especially when the offender is perceived to be “better off” than those looking for this bizarre “justice” and ridiculously moreso when the offending entity is a “large company” or a “corporation.” That is not to say that people are clammoring for the death penalty for shoplifting, but rather that people want to see basketball players pay millions of dollars for getting in a fist fight and doctors to give up medicine and pay out millions of dollars when people get known side effects of drugs which they were informed were likely. It’s that people want to see someone lose a job over something as minor as the “tone” that they made an otherwise innocent statement in, while in a professional capacity. This sort of “justice” is, of course, ridiculous.
The other thing is that I am finding out about more and more people who believe perception over reality… that is not the best way to put it… Not just that perception is reality, which is a reasonable assertion and useful in the realms of philosophy and physics, but that … well, for example, I have met people that, given video of something occurring from four or six different cameras, from as many angles, clearly showing that thing occurring a certain way, and given the testimony of a witness which completely contradicts the videos, would believe the witness. People who, if they heard a speech and perceived it to be one way, would not believe the speaker, other people who heard it, or recordings of the speech to be reality if they contradicted their remembered perceptions, because their perception is the reality of the speech, and nothing else. People who disagree with established facts, despite examples before their eyes and/or reputable and reliable sources that they would trust for other information, with no explanation or alternative offered. Clearly these people are being ridiculous.
And I have been meeting more and more of these people, or realising that people I already knew were these people, and having to push them out of my life and break off contact. I have standards. I also have respect for all my friends who found partners, found lives, and are growing families and building futures. I am also lonely, but I suspect that there is no easy solution to this situation without lowering my standards or respect… but I don’t think I’d want to be friends with someone who had low standards and/or didn’t respect people, and I’m very big on the golden rule.
I realise that the biggest part of lonliness is inside me. I have found myself, in the past, quite lonely even among friends and loved ones and “friends” and family and so on. I have also found myself free from lonliness when virtually or actually alone. So what I need to realise is that this current lonliness is probably some internal response to an external stimulus, that I am not actually any more or less alone than I was a month ago, a year ago, a decade ago, and that it will not stop until – and must stop when – I do what is necessary internally, with/to myself, to stop it.
But I don’t suppose that will be today.
***
I’m thinking of hand-writing my next novel or two in single volumes, and sharing them only with people who actually want to read them, ensuring that they know full and well that they hold the only copy in existence and that I need it back post-haste and in original condition. That would give me circulation/readership numbers about equal to what I have now, but it wouldn’t cost anyone anything.
