Silence like a cancer grows

Lately I've been feeling a growing sense of loneliness and isolation. I've spent a lot of time by myself (not by choice, but yet, its always a choice isn't it?), and have been increasingly uncomfortable with my periods of alone time. I crave people to sometimes just be there, even if there's no conversation, while other times I crave the interaction and banter and friendship and companionship and understanding another person provides. That sounds so unfeeling, like I could be talking about a pet and not a person. I think what underlies it all is a craving for understanding, for someone to look at me while I talk and not to check their phone, for someone to ask me questions followed by more questions, to listen to what I'm saying. I crave for someone to tell me it will be okay, that I'm going in the right direction. I crave for someone to hold my head as I cry with my head resting on their lap. I crave that underlying love that doesn't give advice or order steps or condemn, but gently propels you to stand on your own and not pity yourself. That indulges you moments of weakness and lets you be you for a moment, without all the masks and coverings.

I find that I've been listening to a lot of songs dealing with loneliness. "Sound of Silence" by Simon & Garfunkel is featured in the opening (and closing) scene of The Graduate. It begins with Benjamin Braddock getting off a plane and walking through the airport, all while the song is playing in the background. For almost the entire duration of the song, Ben is moving along the people mover, his upper torso and the wall the only things in view. "Hello darkness my old friend," is the first line, underlying the theme of emptiness and loneliness, but also ironically using the word friend. The problem is that the speaker has no friends, that is why he is lonely. So the only friend that befriends him is his loneliness. Also, Regina Spektor's "Summer in the City" for some reason also speaks to me. On the surface, the song is about sexual frustration, but what it also could be about is craving intimacy. In the song, this takes form through lust for sex. "Summer in the city, I'm so lonely, lonely, lonely, so I went to a protest just to rub up against strangers... The castrated ones stand on the corner smoking, they want to feel the bulges in their pants start to rise." The want to connect with others, to react, to pursue, to feel. But they can't, they are alone.

Ultimately, I realize I am not alone. Not even by a longshot. But it doesn't take away this feeling of loneliness.