We are all alone in the world

alone, alone, alone

I am often nagged by this eerie, and unwelcome of course, feeling that I will die by getting run over by a vehicle. When I walk back home from school alone, as I mostly like to do, I always make sure to use the footbridges, if they exist. When I am with my friends, who happen not to be great fans of footbridges considering how long and winding one of them is, I cross the road with them.

For as long as I am with my friends, I have realized that I don’t think so much of that end that haunts me quite a bit in my solitude. Unconsciously, their company often does end up curing me of that dread that sneaks upon me most times when I am alone. It isn’t that I entirely forget it when people are around me, I do still, once in a while, imagine how I must one day die, ingloriously as it looks, it just doesn’t really seem to matter that much. I can stave off the darkness a bit on account of the presence of another soul, only I am at times afraid I will end up killing one of my friends because of precisely that; I allow them to be so close at a moment when much as my death isn’t assured, it is very imminent. Being hit by a car isn’t how I want to die. I am not yet sure exactly how I would want to were I given a chance to choose.

I can be very good company, if I choose to be. I wouldn’t deny that there’s a great likelihood of that statement being a little too self-deluding. Most people, after all, like imagining themselves as great company when it’s clear even to them they aren’t. Notwithstanding, methinks it’s selfish to know how strangely I seem to have the power to alter the prevailing mood in certain settings, and how I choose at such moments to sink into that depressed part of me. I see the eyes of friends who long to bring me out, who search helplessly for that streak of joy they noticed a day ago, or month. They are never sure of what is going on in my mind in those moments when I am so quiet. This probably allows me to be an enigma, but I suspect not a few people hate me for it.

Today I was supposed to attend a wedding. I was so excited about it the day before, but as soon as morning came, I knew I wasn’t leaving the house. Was it my intention to miss out on such a beautiful opportunity of seeing a couple make vows of loving each other to their deaths? I doubt it very much. Seeing how weddings testify of the hope that is still in the world despite hurts that have been inflicted within the institute of marriage, maybe I should have attended the wedding. But instead, I opted to just sit on my table and flirt with the reality of my mortality. Whether I stay or leave, does it make any difference?

I have wanted to believe people when they tell me how important I am to them, or to the world, but sometimes I see clearly how like most people, I am in fact dispensable. And looking back at how I have lived, do I even have a right to be here? I almost ended up talking about how I have never in my life received flowers from anybody, but I just remembered I have actually not received flowers once but twice. I was still in primary school, and these two little girls might have had a thing for me, or not, but they did pluck a twig and handed it to me. I hope that counts for something, does it not?

Some people might probably just happen to have quite a bit of good to say on my account, and hopefully I will soon be brought several bouquets, only I have to die first. It seems to occur to very few of us that it is the living, and not really the dead, who very much need our praises, our company, and our flowers. But we hoard our kindness, and patiently wait until that day when our words and actions cannot be appreciated. Yet one day it must be the last time. One day must be the last time you are hugging your mom. One day must be the last time you are laughing with your friend while you share a meal. One day must be the last time when you say goodbye to your favorite person in the world. Those moments never feel special. They feel like ordinary days, until they aren’t.

Maybe a few people can mutter without remorse: “that dreadful bore is finally dead!” For the most part, however, it’s a little surprising how even for a life carelessly lived, our death might end up deeply moving some people in ways they least expected. The sun must stop shining for us to see and appreciate that we need it, even if once in a while, to. When you finally die, people notice, they notice you existed. The news might break a few, but soon most people do get over it. Life has to go on, and is there any use holding on to those who have left us? We cannot go on living for the dead, can we? We must live for the living. But do we really?

When I rejoin my friends, my brothers, they will insist, though tacitly, that I disregard my troubles, even if for a moment. They never shush you. They never tell you you shouldn’t speak of your suffering. But you see it in their eyes. The awkwardness. The helplessness. The confusion. Isn’t sharing your troubles with people who in the end cannot be of much help just a way of wanting to be pitied? “We don’t confide in those who are better than we,” says Camus, “most often, we confess to those who are like us and who share our weaknesses. We don’t want to improve, or be bettered, because we should first be judged. We merely wish to be pitied and encouraged in the course we have chosen.” We talk about our troubles and confess our sins to people whose judgement costs us nothing, people who don’t have the ability to insist that we get better, people consumed with their own lives, people who really don’t care how we end up.

Isn’t it just mere courtesy to ask someone how they’ve been doing? If they have been okay? But we cannot bear it to go further, it has to remain a formality, because the truth is that most people don’t really care. I don’t think they are to blame, because it just could be that they don’t even realize they don’t. You can always share a laugh with people you call friends and who call you friend, without them ever knowing how troubled you are. Sometimes, the pity Albert Camus speaks of might be of some help, it might remind you that someone understands, that someone cares, but it gets to a point it also becomes unbearable. Always to be pitied, and never to be helped? We soon recoil. Blame my reclusiveness how much you want, my poor social skills, but when you realize how your burdens are yours alone to bear, and you stop expecting and wanting people to help, maybe it just becomes a little more bearable.

Some people have taught themselves how to carefully hide their scars, and hurts, because they have not found a single person in the world who truly cares. I might have attended that wedding after all, I would have laughed as hard as I occasionally do. I would have danced my guts out in the famous Davidic styles and a few of my friends would have even taken video clips we would have laughed over days later, and not a soul would have known that that morning I almost ended my life.

I recently read a quote by Virginia Woolf that I was unable to track down and find out where exactly she says it: how many times have people used a pen or a paintbrush because they couldn’t pull the trigger? Like hundreds of other quotes we stumble onto, this one here might also likely have meant little to us if we didn’t lay it beside the events of 28 March 1941, when Woolf drowned herself in River Ouse. She had held her pen and pencil long enough, but she finally mastered the confidence to ‘pull the trigger.’ I learnt from one of my Psychiatry classes that it’s older men who are successful in their suicide attempts. They are men. They are old. Age. Sex. Younger people, and women most times, leave breadcrumbs, like this essay for example. Perhaps someone will notice the signs before it’s too late. Maybe they just may arrive on time before my tongue turns blue. Woolf, like most old men, took the journey and made sure she could not turn back. She tied any loose ends by putting a large rock into her pocket. It’s Schopenhauer who says: if one punishes attempted suicide, it is the ineptitude of the attempt one punishes.

Some people probably do commit suicide to get people’s attention. Such suicides are designed to fail, they are done for the spectacle, for if you do end up truly dying, what do you gain. A successful suicide cannot be used to slight other people, for we are not there to see the pain we cause the people who loved us. When we truly are tired of living we tie every loose end. No one ever knows we are gone, until something we used to do doesn’t get done, until they reach out needing something from us and we are unavailable.

Soon I must die, as we all must. It makes no difference whether you see the darkness and pain that is in my eyes right now, I would have wanted you to understand but it matters little if you don’t. We all have our troubles, why should I inconvenience you with mine? Life is lovely because you have all these people around you, whether they care about you or not is something else entirely, it’s enough you are surrounded by them. Death, however, reveals itself as a path that, just as most of our other sufferings, we must take alone. It’s a journey no one else can go with us. We long for and appreciate company for as far as it is possible, but we reach that place where most people do turn back, while a few stand much longer bidding us goodbye. Yet we must continue.

We, it seems, like the drowning man who cannot be touched or helped until he has had enough gulps of water and is now helplessly sinking to the floor of the river, cannot be helped until we break apart. Only then can we be touched, though sometimes it is too late. I am grateful I don’t know when the keys will be asked back, or the door shut on me.

Camus: Men are never convinced of your reasons, of your sincerity, of the seriousness of your sufferings, except by your death.