Alone with the Moon

Save for a brief period of long-distance intimacy this winter, during which I was content to think of the girl in question and myself both staring up the starlight in silent contemplation, the one for the other, it's been a lonely year. During the harrowingly damp summer of 2008 I began to feel, for the first time since my adolescence, that all-too-familiar emptiness gnawing at my gut. This inspired me to write one of my better songs, Professional Jealousy, about the missed comforts of company (See here). The song-writing process seems to fulfil its purpose for me in this respect. It's a cathartic act, allowing me to succinctly express my grief and recall the wiser words at times of crisis; in the slough of despond.

Similarly, Darkness Falls provides a trite few lines about having faith in providence and the ability of the world to surprise and delight you. But the song's essential promise, that time will provide, grows ever more hollow. My best efforts at friend-finding, those frequent and exhausting exploratory sorties into the world of people, seem substantially in vain. The circle of friends I rely on for my daily dose of sanity simply can't cope with the level of communication and succour I require. I am the ringer, the harasser, the constant botherer of innocent contemporaries. I am needy.

This bit of self-awareness, seeing that I am so dependent on so very little human contact, has forced me into a new goal in life: emotional self-sufficiency. In practise, in my situation, this essentially means giving up, going mad, and being "fine" with my isolation. I have toyed with this. I've given it a go, more or less, and my conclusion is that it's a path to destruction. The eventual destination of that particular yellow brick road is becoming the sort of socially inept person one finds at the local Library midday on a Wednesday. Another result is a general slide into rudeness and inconsiderateness. Now, my antennae on this particular set of social principles have never been that well honed, but I have noticed a definite downward trend. I will say virtually anything these days. Profanities gush far more readily from my mouth than they once did, and there is a growing contempt for people of all hues. I distrust the world.

Now, all of this seems utterly lamentable and desperate, yes, but even with this understanding of the problems, I'm truly at a loss for finding a remedy. Moving seemed to be an obvious answer, but it hasn't exactly done me much good. If I'm lucky, I might see humans once every two or three days. Go me. And obviously the depression deepens with solitude, making it harder to contemplate yet another (inevitably doomed?) expedition into the wider world in search of someone, anyone, to have a conversation with. And even then, I'm so desperate for the conversation that it never really goes well. I can sometimes muster that elusive blithesome nonchalance so important in the social world, but it's a struggle.

Volunteering may still provide some sort of route into the world of bonhomie, but it's an exhausting process introducing yourself to new people and situations all the time, with your hopes high and then dashed by other peoples' sheer indifference. I'm pretty sure it was never this hard before. Is it the weary, bitter me that people see? I'd like to think that in person I'm still jolly and talkative enough for most people, but they never actually seem remotely interested in anything as bothersome as being friends. A group of passing acquaintances is about all I seem to be able to hope for, but you can't build a life on that.

So in the solitude, in the grips of depression and a desperation to give up on it all and join some sort of cult, where is solace to be found? The only answer I have found for that is simply ideas. Learning old ones and thinking of new ones. Becoming a vessel for all of the ideas you can possibly imbibe. This seems to have a certain charm to it. So, in lieu of anything else, I shall become the latter-day personification of my adolescent self: a thinking recluse. Willing or no.