in security

Last night I had the most banal nightmare.

It was around 4am when I shot up in bed, turned on the lamp, and lay there feeling dejected and fundamentally, suddenly, outside of my life. It was a dream about friendship; in it, I had brought friends back to my house (in Michigan, absurdly), and I made them a dinner while they sat outside at a table in the snow (their choice), but when I brought out the dinner they said the plans had changed, they were going to a restaurant where another friend was waiting and I could come if I wanted.

It had more to do with who the friends were--one friendship has been haunting me recently, as it does from time to time, and always my own thoughts leave me feeling cornered and vulnerable. But there was also just the action--the casual walking away, the disinterested invite, and my built-up desperation for attention, something that has always been so fundamentally un-me. But I've beaten it to death recently, letting my friends know I've felt alone, dreading--especially last quarter--weekends by myself. I've pushed it out of my head recently and I've been better at adapting than I used to be. I've taken more initiative and pursued some new and old friendships for company. But maybe it was the disinterest of my last date that has me dreaming of rejection at 4am, so uncomfortable it feels like a nightmare, so true that I turn on the light and immediately know, epiphany-style:

People are selfish. They listen and ignore. I am selfish too--I have and will continue to leave lonely people lonely in favor of someone else because it satisfies me, as everyone does. It just so happens that I've never been the one left alone, and now I am.

I can only kind of take it personally; it is, as always, the significant other that wins time and affection, that can give back the best and the most, and now it's all a matter of being unlucky in a pool of lucky people, and being unlucky for a long time. Friends commiserate with each other when they're both alone. No one in a relationship really needs to commiserate, and then your friends are pleasant people for brunch and movies every so often. If all of your friends are in relationships, then you spend lots of nights alone and you end up consoling people because their Other said something stupid or doesn't want to go all out for Valentine's. But really? At least someone is keeping them warm at night. Not one of them would trade me for a second.

That's been my mindset on bad days. I realize it's uncomfortably resentful and narrowly unfair. I don't claim that people in relationships hold the key to happiness, but I do believe they hold the key to a kind of security I feel too frequently barred from right now.

As it is now, I feel okay. I've been loosening up a bit; it's better to be alone and unhappy than to be clingy and making someone else unhappy. Today I thought of it as more of a puzzle. I am alone, have been since time immemorial, and will stay that way for a while, it seems. So how do I make myself happy alone? I need to look into projects, solo social diversions that make time alone a strengthening and rejuvenating thing (like it used to be). I want to mix in philosophy, enjoyment, peace, and contemplation. I should emerge every few weeks more interested in and aware of something, not increasingly resentful and socially desperate.

Knowing that is something, anyway.