Loneliness
The solitary human palette.
A Big Mac is the best burger in the world to the ignorant. The best and cheapest, a win-win. You sorta do not want them to experience a better burger, a quality burger. Other than the health problems of the permanently digesting Bic Mac, there is a comfort in not knowing what else is out there. Not utilising your microscope. That is where loneliness comes into it.
I look out my bedroom window to see a park almost always full. I walk past couples on my way home from work. Sometimes, I see a group of three or more humans that seem to not only know each other but are all connected in some way. Mental. All pals, your partner’s pal, your old pal who you have started talking to again, your work pal you have taken out to morph the social and working worlds- evolving relationships. What if I was blind to this love?
You see, being lonely is only awful in acknowledgement. Only influential in your awareness of it. It is sharks before Jaws. You are reminded that you are lonely. When you have that rare experience of communal joy, you are left terrified the next day. Aw shit, you forgot that was a thing. That felt good; I probably want that all the fucking time, don’t I? Fuck sake. I knew I should not have gone out. It is the worry you will not fit comfortably back into your own skin once you return to a solitary existence. You took your armour off for one day, and now, back in reality, it seems heavier. Perhaps, when you see people complaining that they have intimacy issues on TV, it is not their inability to be intimate. It is their fear of social re-education. A degree in affection that can be robbed from you. Momentarily earned but not always rewarded. Sadly, you do not leave that relationship like you leave an exam hall. I cannot tell you what I put for question two in my Higher Maths exam, but I can tell you when I ignored doom hovering over companionship. A bit like finding out that when you are about to have a stroke, you smell burning toast. I did not want to know that! I do not want to smell burning toast and get scared. Can I not just mourn the burning toast? Give the owner of the toast a hug, tell them I have some bread they can have.
I do not want to know what I cannot hold. Loneliness in moderation is hard, like the painful first shot of a fallen addict. Coat yourself in loneliness, and you will never be cold, but you’ll never feel the sun hug your skin.
It is like restarting a hobby. A hobby you gave up years ago. Let me see if I can still do a layup. Oh, I can. Still not that good at basketball, though, and my team has dwindling numbers. An awareness of human potential- the double-edged sword.
Better make sure I am steaming if I have an exotic burger. Please do not let me remember. Walking about a pub with all your pals for the night with faces of rival franchises passing you by. You lock eyes with them, you smile, they smile, everyone happy because everyone will forget. Belly full of red meat and aspiration shat out in the morning for your own sanity’s sake. I do not want to see your massive house. I do not want to know what it is like to see the colour red. The colour-blind and the circumcised do not tell them of the pleasures of natural life.
What am I saying, though? To just always be by yourself so you forget you are lonely? You coward. It is ultimately the problem of comparison; yano, the whole comparison is the theft of joy. The problem with the problem with the problem with the problem…is that how are we meant to not compare ourselves to others? I cannot eat a Big Mac and not square it up against other burgers in my mind. It is nature. Comparison just goes down as another one of those things you know you should not do most of the time but feel compelled to explore regardless. I guess it is my fault.
My bike was stolen this week.
Cheers