Lonesome Quotations

I needed, need, to be loved. To be loved for me. I am so scared of this. Scared that I will never allow it. Scared that if it comes it will disappear. That I will learn it wasn’t love. Or it wasn’t for me. Or that it was only for me if I wasn’t really me. Because when I let people see me, the real me that is- when I let people see the unkempt, un-brushed, teary-eyed, scared, desiring of love and support me, they realize that I am unlovable. Not even unlovable, perhaps, but that they do not love me. That I am loved only for the false impression people have of me and if I ever dare to let a little bit of the inside out I will become as unappealing as I was first attractive.

(quoted anonymously with permission)

While reading this tonight I was struck by how personally it comes off. Sentiments like the above always seem so individual and intimate, yet I am amazed by their universal nature. It's odd to think about how prevalent these feeling are amongst large populations. By prevalent I don't mean that large groups of people feel utterly lonely and unloved for most of the time, but that in a large group of people, odds are that a vast majority of them have felt as isolated and lonely as the above narrative indicates.

In other words, when one realizes such feelings one feels alone in the world (at least this is true in my experience). One looks about and sees others in the world carrying on as though nothing has happened, which of course only amplifies those feelings of lonesomeness. In those moments one feels as though no one could ever comprehend the depth of one's isolation.

This is the amazing part: for rather than finding such isolation as incomprehensible, one discovers that the experience of longing for real love is entirely universal. We all of us desire to be loved for who we are. And so many of us have had times of great distress wherein we could not find such love or comfort. These feelings are not so rare- in truth, I think most people experience feelings such as these from time to time.

I am reminded of a passage from one of my favorite stories, The Velveteen Rabbit:

“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When A child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.

“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, or bit by bit?”

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

Other than the bit about not minding being hurt once you are Real, I adore this passage. It's comforting to read. Especially tonight, a time I will admit to feeling lonesome. Loneliness is inherently an individual experience, but there is something magical about the discovery of loneliness as a common thread.

I'm not sure that there's anything more for me to say at this point, so instead of dragging this narrative out I bid thee adieu.