Another personal essay in the middle of the night

In an experimental fog, one might take their hand and place it roughly on the center of their chest. If one were to begin to press into their chest cavity, they would feel the closest desperate approximation to what is an infrequent unwanted physical companion in my daily life. The sensation goes beyond being small enough to be alleviated by holding someone else’s hand, however. If the hand were to sink below the flesh and calcify into a bone grip upon the muscles of the chest it might feel more similar. If the fingers extended to delicately squeeze around one’s ribcage like a too friendly hug, it becomes closer. If the heel of the palm were to descend even further to press on one’s own heart, while squeezing with every muscle left at its disposal, the subsequent combination of sensations would be a closer approximation of the loneliness that lies beside me in bed.

My feelings are not unique, but as I would tell my teenage self that fact does very little to change things.

I walk with my loneliness, sometimes side by side, often far apart these days, but still she trails me like a long shadow in a bright evening. I can travel hundreds and thousands of miles and still feel the lingering pressure of empty air.

The older I get the more I’ve tried to rationalize the feeling away, and when that stopped working I’ve tried to fill it.

I moved from a city where I knew so many and failed to build a community for myself that left me feeling anything but empty and unwanted, and succeeded in finding better. Serendipity landed me in a space where I could feel accepted and welcomed far quicker than I would have previously expected, but the lingering touch of that loneliness did not abate.

Instead, I found my expectations reinforced so very vigorously. Every person I’ve tried to date in this godforsaken country either turns out to be recently out of a rough relationship as soon as you sleep together, or so ready to move in and marry that it’s genuinely disturbing (two weeks), or a secret, third, worse thing (already in a relationship, and occasionally willing to let that small matter slip by the wayside).

It’s so frustrating to have the world at your fingertips and not be wanted in return.

The sensation of wanting to shift things and find a path forward where one can feel meaningfully prioritized while seeing the past echoed in every new relationship is one of deep despair. I can’t even convince myself, here, in the dead of night, that what I need is a group of friends who love me and that would be enough. I can so easily see exactly how devastating their eventual walk out of my life would be.

There are diary entries from my middle school self despairing at the reality where I was no one’s first choice, no one’s first love, a second fiddle at every turn even when I outshone every person in the room. Over a decade later and nothing changes. The devastating reality of watching the tide roll in and leave the beach unchanged. The catastrophic sensation of seeing days the way one watches reruns of the same show. The horrifying glimpse of looking at the future and seeing nothing but a long void with a mirror at the other end staring accusatorially back at you.

How far must one go to decouple the self from the self created by those around you? How many times must you slice yourself open in the hopes that when you’re sewn back together the pieces will fit right this time? How much regret must be poured from one’s heart onto the page before there is nothing but ink running off the desk?

Maybe it’s just me after all. Maybe it’s a middle child thing. Maybe it’s an expat thing. There is no such thing as a unique experience and yet I’ve never met someone else whose nose changed in puberty or who has an eczema (?) patch on one spot of their foot that never shrinks and rarely grows or even someone who loves their parents and hates their siblings.

Maybe each human experience is inherently unique due to the vast array of different perspectives we all bring to every new encounter. I’ve never met someone like me and I’m sure if I did I would find her deeply insufferable before ever getting to know her well enough to confirm that suspicion.

What a burden it is to know the impression you give others and to find it nigh on impossible to rectify the bone crunching ramifications of such a reality. What a burden to have felt the fleeting idea of what it is to be loved and to realize the love you’ve been given wasn’t enough.

Or maybe that love just came with barbs too large to be ignored while you climbed past their own walls of security. Maybe spilling all of yourself onto a page in the hopes of being understood, by yourself if no one else, is enough to drown the doubt and hate that man the gates of your self made fortress.

Is joking that second best at least puts you on the podium enough? Damn it all but is anything enough? Will anything ever be good enough? How much blood must be spilled to be sufficient? How much bleach on your head before you melt through the skull and back out of that traitorous tongue?

I could be so good to someone else, I think to myself, after a single instance of being thoughtful. The mirror taunts me knowing that once is not enough. I cannot stand to look at myself and see every flaw that I despise, not even long enough to break the glass.

Never good enough indeed, not even good enough for myself.

Who cares, my words are for me alone at the end of the day.

There is no echo in the void.

My chest aches with the heavy burden that is a heart, how I long to take the burden from another.

I make myself small and compliant. I remind others how valuable I am to keep around. God will anyone even remember my birthday if I don’t scream it into the void in the hopes that they give a shit?

They never have before, why would this year be any different? Why would any year be different? The soft bite of desperate loneliness always seems to intensify at this time of year. I always know why and I wish I didn’t care. I can’t clearly remember a time anyone’s ever cared the way I want them to.

Always so lonely. Always second best.

My shadow is my closest friend.