At the core of every human’s spirit is a desire for belonging. For love, for appreciation, for inclusion… for connection.

As an only child (read: lonely child), I have felt that pulse of desire for a shared connection perhaps more than anyone. I learned easily as a child how to make friends. It’s easy when you offer cheap smiles and playful energy. It intoxicates people. It draws them in. Keeping friends, however, and maintaining close connections, seems to be a skill that is lost to me. A thorn-addled rose; beautiful enough to draw people in, but not something that people would grasp tightly in their hands for any extended period of time.

I often feel like a spectacle because of this. I am a person to be witnessed; to be experienced, but not known. Not adored. Not cherished. In sight but not truly seen; heard but not understood. A shooting star in the sky. The flash of a firefly at night.

I am cursed with a proclivity for deep attachment. I am a spectre grasping at live flesh, only to swipe through the illusional mist of connection. Like one of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, I am only as strong as the devotion and faith of others to worship at my altar. I am strongest when I am needed by others. I am strongest when I can comfort others; console them, take them into my heart and heal them. But they take my light with them when they go.

What does a social creature become when they are faced with the void of isolation? How should a person reply when they are referred to as a wallflower in front of their peers, by their peers? What does a person do when the people who they have infinite time for, don’t have time for them? How does one cope with the black hole of loneliness?

I often ruminate over the first verse of The Weeknd’s Wake Me Up:

All I have is my legacy
I been losing my memory
No afterlife, no other side
I’m all alone when it fades to black
Fades to black
No afterlife, no other side
I’m all alone when it fades
Play smile, live fully
When life is hard
I know death’s easy
Woah

I fear all I have is my legacy. My past, current, and future. He’s also right that ultimately, we all die alone.

But…wouldn’t it be beautiful to have some reciprocated connections before that darkest day?

Wouldn’t it be beautiful to have a community of chosen family who call not just when they need something, but to check in on you? To hear your voice? To call on your light to chase away the shadows? Wouldn’t it be beautiful to be loved as you love?

It’s a dream. Only a dream; but one I will cherish and revisit often. One that I will manifest as I lay in the cold sand on a dead beach in the middle of September. One I will cry myself asleep to.