first installment of loneliness

Of the houses I’ve lived in, the cities and towns I’ve known my way around, the jobs I’ve worked, the habits I’ve formed and broken, there’s a particularly insidious thread that quietly tucks itself away and brushes over its own tiny footprints. Biding its time, it lies unnoticed until a certain shift of the wind and then, all of a sudden, it’s upon me, and i’m utterly smothered by loneliness. It’s only then that I can look back and truly understand that my entire life is nothing more than a swamp of misery, dotted with pathetic tufts of delusional bliss. All else is stripped away and the grim landscape of solitude is laid bare in a way that only the hindsight of the slightly unhinged and depressed can seriously appreciate. In a matter of time, I know, this thread will stitch itself back into the fabric of my normal existence and the bleak fog will roll off to some gloomy perimeter of my brain, to be summoned once a month for my period, or when I’m going through a particularly painful breakup. Until then, I will catalogue the expanses of loneliness that have until now lain dusty and forgotten.

The first week or so of college, at the end of the summer when I was 17, was the first time I remember feeling loneliness as a real ACHE. I remember feeling a rising panic of loneliness, like the itchiness that  compels me up out of bed in the morning, this inescapable sensation of unease and discomfort. I wonder if everyone feels it that way. Probably not, as I've known plenty of people (for example: every single person i've ever dated) who can bask amidst the covers for hours, slipping in and out of lazy slumber like a fucking cat in the dusty sun. I wonder if that's what loneliness is to some--a pleasant warmth and comfort to, at worst, snuggle your head into the pillow to escape from.

At 17, towards end of august, I made a deliberate switch from casual smoker to the kind of desperate nicotine junkie as is so gracefully depicted by Janeane Garofalo in "Romy and Michelle's Highschool Reunion". It was not, in any way, a gradual shift. Living with two other girls in one big room, smoking was the only excuse I could think of to give myself some change of scenery, to escape the dorm room, and to look like i had something to do. I would walk outside, tracing the quad and school grounds with my cell phone-- cruelly blinking zero bars of service. so, sorry mom and dad, but that's how I started smoking a pack a day.¹ 

In Poughkeepsie, NY, I felt an immense rift from my life of months before. I was acutely homesick-- for the freedom of the Chinatown bus to Boston; getting fucked up with friends at the Fens, hanging out on the slab in front of Little Stevies; Ariel and Cara and our matching haircuts and mean jokes; smoking out my bedroom window in the middle of the night, terrified of being discovered, surprised and toppling out onto the street below². The most mundane moments and passing annoyances dripped with glorious significance, saturated in cloying nostalgia: the tiles of the christopher st. subway station, The garbled delay announcements on the F train³, the graffiti on the mail box half way up 11th street, the hot air from the subway vents, the grime that coats your flip flopped feet, the stench of rotting ginkgo fruit.

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1In full disclosure, i also used my fake ID to buy cigarettes at the discount tobacco store at the end of Raymond ave. The lady that worked there consistantly turned a blind eye to  my "legal non government issued ID" that made me 23 and visiting from Massachusetts. So did every guy working at the liquor stores in lower manhattan, who slid bottles of bacardi limon under the bullet proof plexiglass to me and amanda or paola, or the guys that sold me 40s of country club on the lower east side at the bodega off of st. marks when i was 16. did you know me at 16? i barely even passed for my actual age. 

2 I Often wondered what people walking down 11th street at 3am would have thought at a teenager wedged out a 3rd story window, neck craned to ensure that no smoke blew back inside. I would also wonder if people were dying in the hospital across the street, and if they were watching me change my clothes.

3 Always at that desperate teenage hour when the decision must be made: wait for the train, or try to run home to make it back before curfew. I blame this double bind (you’re always late, no matter which you pick) for my disinterest in gambling.