Only you

I read an article a few weeks ago about loneliness, and it made me really sad.

Not necessarily because I felt I could identify with it on a daily basis, but because I have experienced in the past, and certainly will again, the sickening pang of fear upon the realization that sometimes it’s me and only me, and am up I to the challenge?

Dealing with those feelings, fleeting though they were, was challenging, and the intensity of the sensation of relief that washed over me when I talked sense into myself and picked up the phone to reach out to a friend or family member was tremendous. But it made me think: what if that feeling never went away? What if that sinking, pervasive and all-encompassing sense of aloneness was perpetual, a constant companion, something you had to carry around with you like a heavy handbag, or ten extra pounds you want to lose and can’t?

I got to thinking about this on Saturday night while I was out celebrating a friend’s birthday. (Leave it to me to start worrying about being lonely as I’m throwing back glasses of red wine as if they were water, in the accompaniment of five good friends). However, there was a man at the bar we were at, mid-forties, with a Philip Seymour Hoffman air about him. Top-heavy, balding, poorly dressed, and very much alone.

The man bopped about the bar, dancing as if he were the only one in the room, which from his perspective, may very well have been true. He started off hopeful. Imitating some of his younger, more attractive male counterparts, he tried grabbing the hands of a few women, hoping they would go along, would just start dancing with him. Time and time again the technique proved disastrous, until one older, bolder woman placed both hands on his Point Zero-covered chest and gave him a good, hard shove. Deterred but not entirely discouraged, he started dancing alone. He would alternate swaying movements with fast-spinning, both-arms-out movements, banging into couples, bachelor party members, single women and men alike, oblivious. Or was he?

Watching this, I remembered reading somewhere that for a person to maintain a healthy emotional equilibrium, he must come into physical contact with at least three people a day. Animals could be substituted.

Imagine not having anyone in your life to touch, no one to hug you, hold your hand, pat you on the back, and so you leave your 1 ½ and you set out for Peel Street and you pay your $7 cover charge, buy yourself a drink because there is no one else who will do that for you and you close your eyes and spin to an overly jazzed-up rendition of ‘Spank’ and hope to reach out, touch, feel, connect?