Hope Dies Last

I live in a city of four million people. Yet I am lonely.

I sleep forty feet from my immediate family. Yet I am lonely.

I work–in solitude–on most days. So I am lonely.

I have 127 friends on Facebook. Yet I am lonely.

I go out with a few honest to god real friends. But I am lonely.

I am pleasant with another fifty or sixty people. I am still lonely.

I don’t have a boyfriend. My loneliness is only magnified.

I talk to far away friends. And I am lonely.

Because despite all the things I have and all the things I don’t have, I spend the majority of my day living alone and on mute. This loneliness follows me wherever I go. A bank teller will glance at me and I think he can see it in my eyes. She’s lonely. I smile at the widowed grandmother in black and I refuse to look directly at her. Because then her loneliness and my loneliness will merge into one seemingly endless pool of loneliness. I see loneliness everywhere. I wouldn’t know where mine ends and another person’s begins.

I know other people get lonely too. They’ve told me so. In hushed conversations about life and death and love and family; they confess, ‘You know, I’m lonely too.’  I watch people on the street, moving, walking, passing, living. How do they live with their loneliness?  How can they not–pause–like I do and massage my chest with my hand? It is the closest I can get to nursing my heart without tearing it out of my chest and laying it in a pile of rainbows and lollipops. But if I did that there would just be a gaping hole and that is what it already feels like…

…so how do they feel it and push past it? Maybe they sense it but don’t give it a name? And if there is no definition it can’t be real, right? Maybe they drink to get over it. Attend party after party to avoid it.

I don’t blame them. Loneliness is torturous. Each time I wander into it, I see that it is true and empty and senseless and unreasonable. It is everywhere.

Why wasn’t I warned? Why didn’t anyone tell me growing up that I would feel this way? That we would all feel this way? When the time comes, when I have children of my own, and they fear the dark and they fear the empty space beneath their bed I’ll tell them what has taken me years and years to learn:

When Loneliness lands on your doorstep, you should welcome it in. Offer it a cup of tea, have a chat. Loneliness has lots to teach you. Then when you’ve taken all you can, you should promptly shove it out the door.

Tell me–whisper if you must–are you lonely?

On Friday, I was in his neighbourhood. It happens to be one of my favourite places in Athens. While it is only a ten minute drive  from my flat I haven’t been able to return since he broke it off. In fact, the last time I was there was over seven month ago when I was  accidentally leaving behind a pair of earrings. Last night, I sat in the passenger seat and as the driver weaved through the curvy mountain road and we passed landmarks that remind me of him, my mind went back to the summer I spent in Vouliagmeni.

The air is different there. I’ve always felt it. In the middle of winter or in the hopeful stirrings of spring or even on suffocating nights of summer, the breeze there feels brand new. The people are different too; a little less neurotic than the average Athenian. It must help that the Med is only an inhale and an exhale away. Life pauses there, even with cars whizzing by at unjustifiable speeds on the sea road.

I remembered our third date (or was it our fourth?) We had spent the entire day in the sun. Then we spent all evening in the dusk. Then we spent all night in the dark. I remember my burnt cheeks and his red eyes. I remembered those few slow minutes between dusk and dark when I had randomly blurted,

‘Five’

‘Five?’ he had asked.

‘Five times’ I had clarified.

‘Five times what?’

I remembered the way I smiled and kinda dropped my eyes because I was nervous. Sometimes I do that. Sometimes I say things without thinking the entire conversation through. He needed an explanation for the spontaneous number calling and I didn’t want to have to spell it out. So I had just kinda repeated the sentiment,

‘I’ve been counting. And. I’m. At. Five. Times. That. I. Want. You. To…’ I had hoped my eyes would help him finish my sentence. His grin told me he had.

‘Only? I’m at like fifty-five’.

I don’t know the reason we didn’t kiss right then and there. But I remembered that later after our first, our second, our fiftieth kiss, I would throw out numbers at him; especially when he would go off on one of his geeky rants of how news anchors were ruining the English language.

‘Three’ I would say.

He would come back to me with a higher number–until the day he didn’t come back with a number at all. I suppose a smarter woman would have seen those numberless nights as an obvious sign of his wavering interest. But that damn breeze in Vouliagmeni must have gone and blown all the red flags out of my view.

On Friday, I returned to Vouliagmeni. I was scared that the disappointment of another failed romance would have changed my perception of that palm tree haven. I was scared that it wouldn’t be the same inspiring place it once was for me. I was scared that when I looked into the sky I wouldn’t see endless possibility. Instead I would just see never-ending loss. There are countless of other places in this city that have been ruined for me by heartbreak of all kinds. I didn’t want this to become one of those places.  As I stood on the edge of the marina–watching the pristine, white yachts bopping up and down–the breeze came up from behind me and greeted me in a muted whistle.

I felt such sweet relief.  It hadn’t  changed at all.

It still feels brand new.

The most irritating quality of old friends is that two times out of three they’re right. They know you, they know your life stories and–dammit–they remember everything. While this does make one feel special, it also makes it incredibly hard to wallow in self-pity. What good is an old friend if they don’t coddle you when you’re being unreasonable?

The other night while discussing the possible reasons that I refuse to let go of  the potential of Illicit and I, The Best Friend rationalized:

‘Perhaps the only reason you keep going back to him is because you can’t get him–’

‘–And you always get who you want.’

Readers, I was floored.

‘Say what?’ I yelled.  ‘You think I always get who I want? Are we living on the same planet?’

I was certain that she was wrong. I was shocked that the person who understands me better than anyone else could make such a stupendous error in judgment. I demanded evidence. I demanded that we make a list of all the men I have wanted, calculate the yeas and nays and then present those in a two column graph with headings and everything.

‘I want numbers! I want proof!’ I said.

She grinned and began framing my own experiences in a way that I would never because the only thing I like more than statistics is feeling sorry for myself.

‘Dude. You walked into Starbucks and wanted the Barista. Two months later, he was yours. You wanted The Man and a month later, you got him. A complete stranger walks into The Store and two weeks later he’s insisting that he’s the luckiest guy in the world because he met you.’

‘You make me sound awesome.’

‘Seriously. Who have you wanted that you did not get?’

‘But I didn’t really get them, did I?’

That’s when it occurred to us that we were both right.

I do get who I want.

I just don’t get what I want.

And as much as I still think that isn’t good enough, I am forced to acknowledge–but retain the right to Epiphany-anic Amnesia–that it’s not too shabby either.

The ubiquitous ‘they’ say that happiness is a choice.

But if like me, you tend to migrate towards depression, you know that it’s not that simple. Over the last two weeks, I tried to choose happy in the morning. By every afternoon, I had failed.

Yesterday I decided that happy was a lofty goal. So I made this decision instead–

(I’m ambitious like that.)

And you know what?

I feel so much better.

I’ve been pretty vague about the illicit in my life. Vague adds a certain amount of mystery and drama in prose that is not necessarily there in reality. I was ready to be un-vague in this post, but I’ve forgotten how to structure a blog post. Instead, I’m posting a poem–because that is not vague at all.

I’ll be back. What do you think? Could I pass off as a poet?

Sir

I am not a poet

I do not camouflage

Clichés; I do not mould

Abstractions from the remnants

Of the Parthenon’s empty facade

I am not vague like you.

Your lines are art

Open for interpretation

They mean something to everyone.

I am not a whore like you.  

My crushes are not poetry

They do not apply to all.

And my couplets, Sir

will never rhyme

For your comfort

I am not a coward like you.

My words are not

Sealed in a frosted bottle

I do not allude or imply;

I am not a veiled woman.

And I’m unlike the simile you think I am

My lips are not scars to trace

My body is not a map

And your love is not my final destination

Your analogy of me is wrong—

You should edit it.