At funerals, people love to use phrases like “she loved life and life loved her right back”, or “she found joy in the everyday living”, and “she lit up any room she walked into”. Even worse is “she was the life of any party”.
Anybody who uses sayings like those at my funeral will be lying or they never really knew me at all.
I’ve never really loved life, and life hasn’t loved me back. I’ve just been lucky enough to have loved people in this lifetime.
I have spent my life wishing that I could take up less space and wishing that I could take up none at all. Even as an adult, I spend my days cowering in my basement apartment, trying not to make noise or bother my upstairs neighbour.
I don’t want to be a bother.
I work hard to appear okay and work even harder to avoid vulnerability. If people don’t get close to me, I won’t be hurt when they inevitably leave.
That’s the truth.
Also the truth: I just want to be seen.
I only get hugs in my dreams, and I dream often of reuniting with people who truly know me; without me having to reach out first.
I am the friend who checks in with everyone else, I am not the friend that anyone checks in on. When I’m lonely, I reach out to others, though I doubt if I didn’t that they would notice.
I wonder, frequently, who would notice if I quit posting, quit communicating, and quit being.
I’m not sure my own aching loneliness could stand to be out of touch with people in that totality.
“Hey, how are you?”
“……. you?”
“Alright!”
This leaves no space for knowing, for wondering, for caring. I box myself into a corner by wanting people to ask how I am but then not answering truthfully when they do.
Life has always been lonely for me and I feel like it always will be. That looming perpetual loneliness is a heavy weight, one that I’m unwilling to bear.
I wish for sunshine, joy, and warmth to filter into my life as if I could remember what they feel like and I could recognize them if they came. By now, I’ve spent so much time in the dark, surely I could recognize light when I see it.
Perhaps not, perhaps all my days will be grey and cold. Maybe all my life will be empty.
I’m tired of taking up space in this world.
I’m so tired.
Nobody will say “she dreamed of death” or “she lived an aching life” at my funeral, though both will be true.
What will they say, then, to phrase the constant loneliness, emptiness, and chill that I have lived with? How can you spin looming despair into a personality trait?
If my friends can look me in the eyes and not see that I’m not okay, either I have done my job well or they’re not really looking; they’re never really seeing.
Life gave me loneliness. I searched so long for safety and protection, and now I only feel lonely. Loneliness is the only thing I am certain of.
There is no “life of the party” in me.
I do not light up any rooms.
Everyday living has no joy for me.
Who can see me?
.
.
.
Hope this finds you well,
-L
Sight Unseen 