How Long

Kevin read a line in a book that struck him and stuck with him.

Two guys were together, one talking and one listening. At some point the listener made a decision to focus hard on what the talker was saying because he suddenly realized that the topic meant a lot to the speaker.

Kevin was stunned; he longed for that type of consideration. He was passionate and he spoke animatedly about the things that he loved. But the people he met did not share his interests. Their eyes glazed over.

He did not know where to go to meet people like him. In fact he had come to believe there was no one like him. Such a difficult concept to grasp. No one? He met thousands of people in his lifetime; surely somebody in that crowd came at life from the same angle. Of course he had been running his life on the wrong rail and he often wondered what it would be like to jump to the correct rail. What would be the emotional consequence of doing that?

Of course it was too late. Much too late to make that change.

Loneliness hurts uniquely. It is not a physical pain; it's worse. It rips all that is alive out of you and leaves despair. Despair that paralyzes, despair that numbs the mind, despair that overwhelms all other sensation. There is only despair and nothing else.

Sadness is the inevitable companion of loneliness. Sadness so overwhelming that, at times, you just can't move. Still, Kevin had to function.  Alcohol stunned sadness into submission on those days, but it proved to be a remarkably resilient emotion.

He watched a lot of movies about loners; misfits, people who existed on the fringes of society. People living in trailers, working low paying jobs, people committing crimes for survival, existing from moment to moment in anger and fierce independence that ultimately resulted in defeat. Kevin connected with these characters even though he lived a safely middle class existence.

He connected because they were shunned, they buried their emotions, they lashed out but their very existence was denied. This is how Kevin felt, although few people would ever guess that. Death in life. That's how he saw it. Technically he was alive, but as a thinking, feeling human being he was prematurely dead.

Even so, these movies meant something to him. In a convoluted way they made him feel less alone. He would never be able to explain that to anyone and he never tried.

Kevin had cut himself off. Every time he thought about telling someone about a book they might like, a movie they might enjoy, an event they might appreciate, he stopped - because he decided that nobody cared. That realization hurt.

He would never meet another human being with the same light in their eyes as that which used to exist in his own.

He often wondered how long it would take for loneliness to kill him.