Alone

I am alone.

It is different now. Different from a few years back. I felt unhappy a few years back. But these days, this past year and a half, i felt happy. Truly happy.

But yes, i am still alone.

Lives of my old friends has moved on. They moved away. They got children. All very understandable.

Looking back at my old life, i see now i always felt a need to adjust myself. To change how i respond. There was always tension. There still is. I still feel it. It is very hard for me to relax and be myself, completely, with other people. To be honest, i will rather be by myself. It is easier for me.

Working in the garden has added some difficulty these past months. All different sorts of people, with whom it is hard to find the right note. Who say things i don’t understand. I need to deal with that, by myself.

They do not know me. I tell myself that that is fine with me. But some of the things they say are hurtful.

And, as it turns out, some of the things i say are hurtful too. I learned this this week. Strange.

Right now, i feel happiest when i’m alone watching at the world. Reading articles, thinking my thoughts all by myself. Trying to find a place from where i can speak, think.

It is still a bit muddled. A bit unclear.

I hope i am growing up steady.

It is hard for me to talk about with a clear mind.

I am trying.

So please, do what ever you want. You may read the articles i posted at the end of this one. Or not. You can read the quote. Or not. You can watch what Simon Vinkenoog is saying, in Dutch. Or not.

Whatever you want.

There is a gentrification that is happening to cities, and there is a gentrification that is happening to the emotions too, with a similarly homogenising, whitening, deadening effect. Amidst the glossiness of late capitalism, we are fed the notion that all difficult feelings — depression, anxiety, loneliness, rage — are simply a consequence of unsettled chemistry, a problem to be fixed, rather than a response to structural injustice or, on the other hand, to the native texture of embodiment, of doing time, as David Wojnarowicz memorably put it, in a rented body, with all the attendant grief and frustration that entails.

I don’t believe the cure for loneliness is meeting someone, not necessarily. I think it’s about two things: learning how to befriend yourself and understanding that many of the things that seem to afflict us as individuals are in fact a result of larger forces of stigma and exclusion, which can and should be resisted.

Loneliness is personal, and it is also political. Loneliness is collective; it is a city. As to how to inhabit it, there are no rules and nor is there any need to feel shame, only to remember that the pursuit of individual happiness does not trump or excuse our obligations to each another. We are in this together, this accumulation of scars, this world of objects, this physical and temporary heaven that so often takes on the countenance of hell. What matters is kindness; what matters is solidarity. What matters is staying alert, staying open, because if we know anything from what has gone before us, it is that the time for feeling will not last. (Source: The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone)

Simon Vinkenoog – Je bent nooit alleen

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