The Lonely City

My latest read [or one of them] is The LonelY City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone, by Olivia Laing. It's part memoir, part cultural essay on loneliness and art. Loneliness is a subject of great personal interest, as you can imagine. After I wrote my last post, it made me think about that, the idea of companionship and friendship, and how I've often spurned relationships to where my solitude is a deliberate decision, yet I am also lonely.

We want the type of companionship we want, and anything else just won't work. I attended church for a while and there was this older man who would not leave me alone, to where I quit attending. He would glom on to me to where it was hard to even talk to anyone else. It was creepy. I had to be abrupt, which is hard for me to do.

There was also my previous relationship. I still feel bad that I didn't end it in the best way [suddenly, over the phone.] But it wasn't working for me.

It goes both ways. There are people that I wish I could be close to, yet can't be. I know I've probably unintentionally become the creepy person to someone else. Sometimes I feel like there's a deterministic element to it all.

I really miss the lockdown era at times, I felt like my world had more people in it then, even if they were people from halfway around the world. I"m still in touch with a lot of the people from that time, but it's not the same. There was this feeling that we were all in it together, and that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. There was also this crazy sense of creativity that I can't seem to access anymore.

I don't really hold much truck with the whole "male loneliess epidemic" idea, most of that is self-imposed by indulging in asshole behaviors that the internet has reinforced. People used to be shamed into better behavior so they would grow out of things. Now they don't feel like they have to.

Those are some of my thoughts on loneliness, which aren't super related to Laing's book, which is fantastic. I sometimes treasure solitude, I like doing things alone, traveling alone, and only occasionally wish I could share moments with someone else. But when I do, it's really a sad feeling.