What I’m trying to tell you is this: When that slow-motion moment comes, and you feel the air being sucked out of the room, and you can’t take your eyes off someone—take a risk and talk to them. Or even if it isn’t that dramatic—if there’s someone smart or cute or interesting, if there’s someone you feel like kissing—ask that person out. And in the absence of those feelings, don’t sit still, waiting to be chosen. Don’t feel like your life is on hold or missing a piece because you aren’t dating anyone. These are the times you can grow wildly and with abandon, knowing you won’t jab anyone in the eye or break anyone’s heart. These are the times to perfect your French accent, or watch every Greta Garbo film, or learn to play the ukulele. These are the times to figure out what you want to major in, to immerse yourself in ideas, to go on adventures with friends or strangers, to find out who you are by discovering what you thrive on.
The girl I fell for in college? We’re married now. We have a daughter and a little green house and tomatoes growing in our garden. I catch myself often in moments of wonder that I could have the kind of love that I do. It’s as magnificent as you hope it will be. When it comes to you, it will be worth all the disappointment that came before it.
But, Scared, let me tell you this: The best love story is the one where you love yourself.
Wishing you many kinds of love,
and wild growth and courage,
and all the lessons I’ve learned much sooner,
Well, right now it’s feeling worse because the same thoughts are repeating themselves, bouncing around in there. You’re like a teakettle begging to let out some steam. You need to let someone pull you off the stove and pour you into a cup.
—Let’s Get Lost, Adi Alsaid
Dear Heartbreak,
I am afraid that someone will love me (or think they will) only to find out once they get to know me that I am truly not a person they could love. I feel like I must keep people at a distance to protect not only myself, but them as well. It is so lonely and so heartbreaking because I do not know how to fix it. I wish I could because I truly do love others, but now I am so isolated I don’t even know where I could go to even meet people. I still have hope, though, that someday things can change for the better.
—Motionless, 19
DO YOU CARE TO RESIDE WITHIN?
Dear Motionless,
How much do you know about truffles? I knew some of the basics before writing to you—rare fungi, found in the dirt, used in cooking—but I wanted to do a little research before answering you. Here’s what I learned:
• It’s believed that they evolved underground to protect themselves from forest fires, frost, and other environmental threats.
• Truffles form part of a symbiotic relationship with a host tree; each provides the other with crucial nutrients.
• It’s not just pigs that find them; trained dogs and goats do, too.
• A truffle once sold for over $37,000.
• In 2016, France harvested approximately 55 tons of truffles.
I think you may know where I’m going here, but it’ll do you no good for me to be vague. Motionless, you are a truffle. You have sent yourself underground for protection, to hide from the harm of heartbreak and the soul-crushing frost of being unloved. This, in a very real and natural sense, is a perfectly reasonable approach to life. Seek safety from harm.
But it sounds to me that you know that’s not how you want to live your life. You have this self-awareness, and you have hope. These are good starts. Now ask yourself this: Is protection from pain worth living underground? Will the benefits of exposure to the outside world outweigh the potential harms that will come your way?
Truffles hide in the dirt, but attract a host of animals. Mainly humans, who’ve found that even a fungus hidden in the ground is worth searching for. For any of what I say next to work, though, you have to think of yourself as a truffle. You have to know that you are inherently valuable. If no one is saying that to you, you have to say it to yourself.
You have to be kind to yourself. The assumption that someone could get to know you and then find you completely unlovable, well, it’s a typically human assumption. It’s a damn rude way to act toward ourselves, but most of us do it at some point or another. You’re not alone in the fear. Like everyone else, though, you’re wrong, and you have to move past it.
I used to be a shy kid, stuck within a proverbial shell. I fostered dreams of showing my true, goofy self to the world, but kept it hidden from most people. My sister jokes that until I came back from a trip to Israel when I was eighteen, she’d never heard me speak a word.
I’m not sure why I felt the need to hide. Maybe, like you, it was a fear that people would not appreciate the person I would reveal myself to be. I searched through my old LiveJournal account (a sort of early 2000s Tumblr) and found a bevy of angsty posts, sparked through with moments of joy on days when I did feel comfortably myself. I wrote love letters to girls in high school and then fled before they could respond, thinking the move was inherently pathetic. If I recall correctly, I once even referred to myself as pathetic within the letter, casting myself as unworthy of love.
My brother puts it this way: “You couldn’t decide if you cared or not. Then you decided you didn’t.”
He said this when we shared an apartment in college, when I was doing things like taking spontaneous road trips to Baker, California, just to have lunch, or founding a student organization at UNLV called Students for the Advancement of Silliness. I brought my first girlfriend to the top floor of a library and rained down thirty notecards with book quotations on them. I wrote editorials in the school newspaper about choosing to be happier. I broke out of my proverbial shell, deciding, as my brother pointed out, that I no longer cared to reside within it.
It’s a damn hard step to implement, I know. Insecurities and worry and maybe experiences with others have wired your brain in a way that has turned you mean toward yourself. Try to catch instances of this happening. I was guilty of this plenty of times on that museum of myself I found on the Internet. Any time you start thinking that there’s nothing lovable about you, argue with yourself. Stick up for yourself to that shitty inclination we all have inside. Remind yourself of how much love you have for others. How you are selfless, a good cook, patient, smart, kind, charitable, a champion cuddler—fill in the blanks, whatever they may be. And if you are right now thinking that you can’t fill in the blanks, that’s the mean part of your brain and I want it to shut up. Take a long, kind look at yourself. Assess yourself with only positive words. Say these words out loud until you believe them.
I happen to think that, eventually, a pig or dog or goat or human who finds value in you will find you anyway. Truffles are delicious; that’s why we seek them out. I don’t think you want to wait around for that to happen, but it’s something I’ve found to be true in life. It takes time. In high school and in college, I found groups of friends that were merely company, and I found people who saw me for who I am and loved me for it. Patience isn’t my recommended strategy, but it’s good to keep in mind. The people who value you come around. It doesn’t always feel that way, but they’re out there, searching for you, just like you should be searching for them.
Will some of them get close to you and then later find that you are not what they were searching for? Absolutely. Motionless, it’s going to happen. Just not every time. We meet people in life with whom we are incompatible. No matter how great truffles are on French fries, shaved onto pasta and risotto, there are people who dislike them. Our differences are sometimes obvious right away, and sometimes they only come to light after a while, leading to heartbreak and pain and the desire to burrow in the dirt. This doesn’t mean we are universally unlovable. If someone gets to know who you are and decides not to be in your life, it is not an admonishment of who you are; it does not diminish your inherent value. Quite frankly, screw those people. You don’t want them in your life anyway. Wait for the t
ruffle lovers.
Now let’s talk about that second bullet point, the host tree that depends on you. You’re feeling overwhelmed by loneliness, so it probably doesn’t feel like you have one right now. But I promise you there’s a larger community that you need and that needs you. I recommend you look for it, a tiny root at a time.
Maybe you’ve hidden yourself away from the roots that are already there, or maybe you’ve yet to find them. A coworker who counts on your interaction every day. A classmate who admires the things you say in class and aspires to be as thoughtful as you. Your cat, who counts on you for food and for the love you provide it even though it never seems to return the favor. You belong in the world, Motionless, even if you’ve buried yourself in the ground, even if you feel apart from it. Look for the small ways this is already true, and treat them like ropes cast down to save you and slowly pull yourself up to the surface.
Let’s set aside the poetics and the pep talk, and dispense with some practical advice on where to meet people: couchsurfing.com. Even if you don’t travel, the people that use the site are by and large lovely, good-hearted people, social in a way that embraces those who aren’t normally social. When I moved to Monterey, California, to start writing, I didn’t know a single person in the area. I posted on Couchsurfing once, and within a day I was meeting up with a guy for coffee. He introduced me to a whole social group who would be my closest friends during my time there, as well as hooked me up with a volunteer job at an elementary school so that my visa could remain current. There were potlucks where I spent a whole night eating, talking travel, feeling like people who were previously strangers could easily whittle away my loneliness. Look for meet-ups in your town. There are subgroups for people who share your interests. Try meetup.com, too, where you can find everything from language-exchange buddies and book clubs to people looking to climb a mountain or develop an app.
Volunteer somewhere relevant to your interests. An urban garden, maybe. Something to do with kids, if you’re interested in spending time with innocent, maddening, amusing, filterless little human beings. A library, to surround yourself with books and the people who love them.
Two years after returning to Mexico, I was living at home with my parents and had not much in the way of a social circle. Writing is a wonderful job, but it can be a lonely, isolating affair, and I was desperate to find a way to have people in my life again. I thought about jobs that I could get that would allow me to still write, but that were within my interest level, so I applied to be a flight attendant, and then a basketball coach.
I was hired for the latter, and the changes were almost immediate. It took a while for me to really find my people within the school where I was coaching, because, again, that’s sometimes just how life is. But eventually I found them. They found me. Working at that school led to my meeting some of the closest friends I’ve ever had, including my soon-to-be wife.
These acts of reaching out will probably be a little bit outside of your comfort zone. Do them anyway. Your comfort zone is malleable. Just like it’s shrunk in around you, you can make it grow. Don’t go thinking you’ve buried yourself in the dirt forever. The more you push back against your comfort zone, the more you put yourself in an opportunity to dig yourself out and find the people who will appreciate you for exactly who you are.
When I started Students for the Advancement of Silliness, I had to be outgoing, show my weird self to a much wider world than my close group of friends. I had to file paperwork with the university, had to organize events, though I’m the kind of person that practically flees from plans. It was uncomfortable, and at times it didn’t feel like there was a point to it. But again, that move brought people close to me, the exact kind of people who would appreciate who I am.
When you’ve met new people this way, I think it’s helpful to remember that France harvested 55 tons of truffles in 2016. You are not the only truffle out there. Some may not be part of your host tree, and some may come to harm you, but many know exactly what it’s like to feel what you’re feeling now. We’re all truffles, hidden in some sort of dirt, waiting to nourish and be nourished.
Remember that there are pigs out there who know how valuable you are. Remember that the benefits of an exposed life outweigh the harms. Remember to be kind to yourself, Motionless.
Cara takes my hand in hers and holds it on top of her stomach. Our heads are near, on the same large pillow, and every once in a while, when we breathe in at the same time, our shoulders touch. I almost cry a little, because I never think anyone wants to be this close to me.
—37 Things I Love, Kekla Magoon
Dear Heartbreak,
I think I’m alone. I’m surrounded by people, but I’m alone. I try to fit in, but I just … can’t. I’m a thirteenth wheel. I still have my family, but they’re drifting apart, slowly but surely. At the same time, I can call people and they almost always answer, but I feel like a pest. Just for once, I would like to BE called. If you have any advice, I would appreciate it.
Thanks,
N
IF YOU CALL, I WILL ANSWER
Dear N,
Alone.
That word on the page looks exactly how it feels—like standing all by yourself in a very white room. Nothing on the walls. No furniture, no windows.
Sometimes that room is your own mind.
Is it an endless room? One you can walk and walk through? Or is it a tight little box, in which you can barely stretch your arms to their full length?
Alone.
This feeling has nothing to do with the volume of people around you. It sounds like you have a group of friends, maybe as many as twelve of them. You’re certainly not the first human being to feel less than satisfied, even in good company. We are, universally, made of more than the sum of our parts. Each one of us is an ocean, rich with unseen depths.
It hurts to feel unseen. To feel unappreciated. It hurts when you don’t fit in. Humans are social creatures. We crave company and contact, the warmth of other bodies, other hearts.
And yet, we are so often by ourselves.
Alone.
This word likes its capital A. The sharpness of it, the certainty. It says, fuck you, world, I’m the Eiffel Goddamn Tower—look at me against the sunset sky and kneel as you were always meant to.
Most of us don’t want to kneel. Most of us don’t want to live forever in the state of Alone. We want to reach out, we want to be reached. The saddest thing I can imagine is a person who lived an entire human life and never felt connected to anyone.
In the end, most of us don’t end up living forever completely Alone. And chances are, N, you won’t, either. The world is full of interesting people. Somehow, against all odds, we find each other. There may be deep loves, rich friendships, and a new, stronger meaning of family yet to come for you. Not immediately, but the best things in life are worth waiting for.
If you’re rolling your eyes right now, I don’t blame you. Promises and hopes for the future mean very little when you’re in pain. The hard truth is—Alone is a feeling that may always be with you. Albeit to different degrees. In this life, we are inextricably bound to our own minds, our own skin. We barely have time to get to know ourselves deeply, let alone to have others know us. Parts of us may well be unknowable.
It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. And you are trying, N. The best news in your letter comes in this line: “I can call people, and they almost always answer.”
Even though it doesn’t feel like it, you are well on your way to feeling less alone. The first step to getting called is to KEEP ON CALLING. Be gentle and thoughtful in your reaching out, but try to be unafraid. One of the hardest things to do is to put yourself out there, to be vulnerable to the possible rejection you fear most. To call someone you like when you aren’t sure they’ll pick up or you’re afraid they’ll think you’re a pest, takes great courage. It makes me smile to imagine you nervously picking up the phone. In my life I have rarely been brave like that.
I write
this letter to you from a ditch on the side of a road in rural Pennsylvania. I’ve run my car off the road trying to avoid a deer, and I can’t get it back out on my own. So I’m waiting. I’m a little shaken and a little scared, and I’m in the middle of nowhere so I don’t know whether help will arrive before dark. I don’t have anyone to call, apart from my insurance agent, and her cool, businesslike sympathy is not what I want in my ear. I want someone who loves me to wish me back home. Someone who would be willing to talk to me while I wait, or to offer to leap into a car and drive a hundred miles to come get me, however irrational that would be. But I don’t have that person. I don’t have anyone to call, and the tow truck is on its way, so I might as well do my writing. I’m uninjured and my laptop still works, and as I was driving I’d already been thinking about what to say to you, and how to explain the joys and sorrows of being—or feeling—Alone.
There is a great sadness to Alone. There is also strength. There is strength in being of yourself and doing for yourself. But you cannot give in to it, or resign yourself to it. You cannot become afraid to keep trying. You cannot become afraid to keep calling.
I sit here, cross-legged in the dirt in the middle of this one-lane road, thinking about all the ridiculous things I’ve done by myself because I was too embarrassed or too scared to ask for help. I dragged a sleeper sofa down a flight of stairs once. I’ve built countless IKEA furniture pieces that are supposed to require “team lifting.” I’ve driven myself to the hospital with a broken foot. I’ve moved a 40-gallon fish tank multiple times. I’ve stayed in hotels because I was too shy to ask a friend to stay over, or I worried that they’d feel unnecessarily obligated to take me in even if they didn’t want to. I’ve done this more than once, only to receive a sad message days later: “Why didn’t you tell me you were in town?”
Dear Heartbreak Page 3
