Backdating?

The date on this post should only read about 10-15 minutes prior to the date on this one.

Whoops.

17 Again

No, not the Zac Efron movie, but my previously blog post.





Badoom-boom-ching!

See? Still got it.

(Also, I totally had to look up the spelling of his name. This makes me happy.)

Only the lonely...

I have been casually plodding through this post for weeks now and due to recent events which I will not elaborate on, its point has become rather moot. Well, not entirely, but certainly more irrelevant, more insignificant, completely reduced, almost...ironic. There's a dark humour lining the fact that this, a blog about how earth-shattering it is to be lonely, was in the process of coming into being as the events of the recent past were in the process of unfolding.

I'm afraid I can't help but be a little cryptic with this one, folks, and as coherence has not really been the order of the past few days, perhaps instead of attempting desperately to construct a story for you well after the moment has past, I will bravely (I am so courageous) paste the scraps for you to assemble (or not) as you see fit.

First, my revised introduction to the post, composed about a week ago:

I've refrained from posting this, a scattered blog on what it means to be lonely. I've wavered back and forth and yet here I am...tis the time?

A little over a month ago I posted this, a slightly too serious, at times overly sappy, sugary, cheesy (both sweet and salty, apparently), blog post outlining my admiration for and adoration of the multitudes of people who make being me not only manageable, but, at times, pretty frakin' superb.

It was only a matter of time, however, before thank-yous and gushings reverted back to all more habitual whinings.

I've been a little sad, lately. I would like to take this moment to discuss why.

Let me preface all forthcoming comments by acknowledging my reluctance to delve into this subject matter at all, and the trepidation with which I approach the topic, not wanting to simplify it or lean casually on tired clichés. The state of being lonely is complicated and personal and hundreds of romantic comedies and matchmaking service commercials have done no favours to our collective understanding of the experience of it.

This all started with a piece I was writing for a creative writing group. That being said, the piece I was writing for this creative writing group probably came about as a result of one of my cyclic (and incredibly indulgent) periods of uber-loneliness. Not necessarily tied to Hallmark calendar holidays as rom-coms would have one believe, I find I tend to become really sad about the state of being "alone" a few times a year in heavily concentrated doses. This, as it turns out, has been one of those times.

Second, the piece I was working on; mere fragments attempting far too blatantly to grapple with the subject matter at hand. Please note: never would I normally consider the following complete or in any way ready for submission. I include them here only as part of this bizarre exercise:

The Big Chill basically opens with Kevin Kostner's receding hairline. If you've seen the film, you probably didn't even know he was cast in it at all. He's not one of the seven (~eight) main characters, old college friends who are reunited for a weekend of sex, drugs and rampant reminisces. But that's his hairline alright, distinctive, as the movie opens. You see, Kostner is the cadaver. He's the friend who slits his wrists in the downstairs bathroom of his friends' summer home and whose suicide sets off the whole thing. The former school chum of the man who owns the house. The lover of the woman married to the man who owns the house, the woman who he fucks right under the man's nose. He slits his wrists and dies and the movie begins as hands reach across from off-screen, dressing his lifeless body for the funeral which will bring our friends together and force them to epiphanies college was apparently never equipped to reveal to them.

Sometimes I think of myself as Kevin Kostner's receding hairline.

********************************************************************

I hold myself in the night before I fall asleep. I don't know if this is weird because I've never watched anyone else fall asleep alone. If I did, they wouldn't be alone anymore, and I still wouldn't know for sure. I imagine no one else does this. It makes the act at once unique and pathetic. It also means that no one else can ever hold me the way I want them to.

No one can hold me like I can hold myself.

********************************************************************

I keep having this dream, this hero complex dream. My friends and I are in peril--you know, peril, like a Saturday morning cartoon but real and you're scared. Peril, like in the cartoons, is easy enough to get out of, you just need to answer correctly, respond in the right way, do the right thing. Because there's always a question or challenge; always a way to escape. But escape always comes at a cost. You don't escape peril without paying for it. "Make me believe it," he says, this ambiguous "he," this face of evil, the bad guy, the source of the peril. "Make me believe it. You don't all get to leave but some of you can if at least one of you can make me believe, convince me that taking your life over everyone else's here is more tragic, will mean more than taking anyone else's or everyone else's combined. One of you has to die. But only one of you has to, if you can convince me." "It's me," I say knowingly, confidently, like any one of the superheroes from my favourite television shows or movies or comic books would say. "It's me and I can prove it. I can make you believe it."

And suddenly I am the centre of attention in a life-or-death game show and the lights dim and the dramatic score picks up and I look my enemy straight in the eye and explain myself:

"It's me. My death would be the most tragic. Look at them all, happily paired. Kill one of them and it's a tragedy, yes, for that one other person. Killing one of them would break the other but you can do better than that. Kill me, well, you don't break any of them. And that's why it's the best answer to your question. Take me and instead of one broken person you have a pile of them relieved. Relieved that it was me. Relieved that the world is right again, makes sense, progresses."

It's a trick I've used, of course, a clever ruse. I don't really mean it, but I know the logic holds up. I've done what I needed to do to win and I know Mr. Peril will relate to what I've said. I've done what I needed to do to save the day.

********************************************************************

I hate my fucking dreams, with their blatant metaphors. I hate how indulgent I am. I hate this one especially, how it's presumably about other people when it's clearly all about me.

********************************************************************

One night I let my friend hold me until I fell asleep. I sobbed and sobbed and her grip tightened and I think I probably scared her a little but she didn't let go until well after I had finished crying and my breathing returned to normal and I was drifting off. We didn't talk about it afterwards.

It hasn't been more than a week or two and I barely know the person who composed these self-obsessed, entirely non-narrative tidbits. A little perspective, I suppose, goes a long way.

There are far more frightening things than being alone, and I of all people should recognize that I am hardly alone to begin with. I wonder about the things I crave, the things I lament and whether I crave and lament them implicitly or because I've been instructed and conditioned to do so. An impossible, unsolvable line of inquiry but an important one nevertheless.

I'm rambling. I can't help it, really. I can't tell you what I'm thinking or experiencing or how my world has shifted since I sat down at my laptop to break your hearts over what it means to sit solitary on the bus, sleep alone in a full-size bed, hold one's own hand for comfort. I know, without question, that I would endure such an existence with pleasure before I would give it all up.

It seems I am always making compromises with the universe, and if you're listening, this is one compromise I'm willing to make.

(If you're thinking, 'She really needs to chill the fuck out," you've never been more right.)