On Friday, coming back from watching the presidential debate at a friend’s house, I found myself walking alone on Bedford Avenue, in Williamsburg. It was about midnight.
It was raining slightly, but the streets were still crowded and lively. Young artsy people were filling the bars, smoking on the sidewalk, eating pizza on a step, chatting with each other about relationships, movies, and politics. Wiliamsburg felt cozy and familiar. And I felt utterly lonely and out of place.
I’m at a very strange juncture in my life. I have everything and I have nothing, I’m at the peak and at the lowest point of my life. A jumble of feelings and thoughts about events I can’t make sense of are having a fist fight in my head. Above all, I feel lonely and isolated in this city of 8 million.
The feeling of exclusion from the shared enjoyment has been part of my experience for as long as I remember (I wonder what Freud would say about it ;-). I haven’t yet learned how to deal with it, which means that perhaps I will never do. And to tell you the truth, as much as I love this city, NYC or the US are not the easiest places to learn how to feel connected again:
A recent study by sociologists at Duke and the University of Arizona found that, on average, most adults only have two people they can talk to about the most important subjects in their lives — serious health problems, for example, or issues like who will care for their children should they die. And about one-quarter have no close confidants at all.
“The kinds of connections we studied are the kinds of people you call on for social support, for real concrete help when you need it,” said Lynn Smith-Lovin, a sociologist at Duke and an author of the study, which analyzed responses in interviews that mirrored a survey from 1985. “These are the tightest inner circle.”
There are so many things I need to share with my absent close confidants. I’m no longer what I used to be and I don’t know what I’ve become. My personal life is utterly confusing and disappointing. I spend too much at work because work is the only thing that makes sense. Aside from social and environmental justice, I don’t know what to desire or to dream of. The social narrative about myself that I would build by talking to friends, that essential part of my identity that would make me smarter about who I am and what I should do, it’s just not there any more.
Of course, I have a lot of responsibility for my situation. I do fear intimacy. I crave for independence and yet I need a lot. I’m suspicious of other people’s motives. I demand extraordinary loyalty and integrity from me and others. I don’t nurture and maintain my relationships.
Yet this level of isolation is beyond anything I’ve experienced so far. And I know that it’s not just me.