The Whereabouts of Loneliness

Mother Teresa (1910 - 1997)
The most terrible poverty is loneliness and the feeling of being unloved.

I can still remember my third grade year at Hershey Elementary School. It may sound sick, but everyone made fun of me for little or no reason. Maybe it is that "separating the chaff from the wheat" tactic that grade school kids unconsciously do, or maybe they just did not have anything better to do. I was a new toy, and thus, I deserved some attention, whether it was good or bad. Of course, the fact that every other kid in my Class of 2001 belonged to a family that was filthy rich may have something to do with it, but either way, these were definitely the people who molded me into who I am.

At lunchtime in third grade, I usually sat with my brother and whoever else he would make friends with in his class. However, in fourth and fifth grade, my brother was in a different scheduled lunch period than I was. In short, I had no one to sit with. Everytime I would attempt to sit with someone, they would usually pick up their lunch and move away. Everyday at lunch for two years, I would sit alone and I hated every minute of it. It seemed as if everyone else would pick on me just because I was slightly different. If I had been black, they would have just whispered comments behind my back like "Weak fucking nigger." I know for a fact that they would do that to the few people in our school that were actually black and I always found that they were just cowards who were unable to speak their minds. However, I had a stutter and I was white, so for some reason, that made it okay for everyone to pick on me to my face.

As the years passed by, I gradually learned when I should speak and when I should not. Most of the time, I did not speak, or else I would receive a certain degree of backlash from people. However, my loneliness also affected me in other ways. My self-esteem went to shit; I remember dropping all of the sports that I was involved in until high school. I conformed to however people would make fun of me; if I was wearing white socks with blue stripes on them, I had to wear just plain white socks or else I would get picked on for the stripes. If I said something that they did not agree with, instant ridicule; I remember once saying that Sean Connery is a pretty good actor, but everyone else laughed at me because they chose more "popular" actors. It was always one thing after another.

In short, they were teaching me to hate myself.

Okay, reality check: once I got into middle school, I actually started getting friends who would look beyond my stutter and listen to what I was saying. Up until then, I was pretty much on my own. Much like how Shakespeare called jealousy a green-eyed monster, I think loneliness is a brown-eyed monster, and those two still eat away at me even today. Yeah, the friends I have help to ward off those monsters a bit, but they can only help so much. I need to take the next step.

My boy Tyler's webpage, February 17, 2003
i'm so ready to settle down, like long relationship type thing. its not even about 'getting some'. i've had my some...very good times. but i want something with more substance, something deeper. i need a connection. the belief and longing for the soulmate has returned...[sigh]...and so has the pain.

I will be perfectly honest: I have never met Tyler in real life. He is a good, online friend of mine, and if there was ever anything that he needed help with, I would not hesitate to give him a hand. If there was a man with a gun who had only one bullet and Tyler and I was his target, I would not hesitate to step in front of Tyler and take that bullet for him. Maybe that is because of the lack of self-esteem portion speaking in me makes me a bit suicidal, but I think that I would do that more because he is one of the better people I have ever met in my life and he has always tried to be a good friend to me. I ask that he stop calling me and other people "fag" even though it is done in a joking manner, and Tyler never calls his friends "fag" anymore. Simple as that.

Anyways, I mention Tyler's webpage and that quote because I have pretty much the same thoughts and feelings. Okay, two slight differences between Tyler and me in that statement: I am still a virgin, and Tyler is not; my pain has always been there. However, everything else is true. I want a relationship with a woman that is deeper than just sex. I want to be able to look into her eyes and lose myself in them. I want to be able to enjoy sitting down and watching an anime with her, knowing that she enjoys it just as much as I do. I want her to enjoy sleeping in on Sunday mornings with me, smooching every once in a while, holding each other, and enjoying the silence in between talks. I want to be able to argue with her every once in a while, but always know that I still love her and that our slight differences of opinion just make us love each other more because we are opening ourselves to each other. I want to be able to take that invisible mask off my face that goes by the name of "being a man," crying like a newborn baby about everything I could never find the tears for that deserved to be cried for, telling her things that I have never told myself let alone anyone else, and have her love me even more in the end. I want to hold her in my arms while she holds me in hers and know that the loneliness in my life has finally gone away.

I just want a soulmate. A ying to my yang.

By no means do I want perfection, but I will settle for something that is just a step below perfection. I want a real woman, not one of those fake Britney Spears chicks who have zero personality. Some people search for their idea of perfection for all of their lives, but people are anything but perfect. I just want someone to love who loves me back just as much, and while I am at it, I want to share our experiences of life together until the day we die.

Lance (My brother) just celebrated his 10-month anniversary with Amy (His girlfriend) by taking her out to a restaurant for Valentine's Day, but it almost feels as if his relationship is the antithesis of what I am looking for. Even though we are twin brothers, we share very different tastes. I can describe Amy in one word: vanilla. She is just a plain flavor, nothing special about it, easy to like but hard to love. My parents say that they are just keeping their relationship going because they both want sex, but I think it is more than that, and yet it is not very deep. Lance and Amy have about nothing in common that they can share with each other. My brother loves Xbox, but Amy hates it; my brother loves screwing around on computers, but Amy dislikes using computers extensively; my brother loves going out places and trying new things, but the furthest from home Amy has ever been is 200 miles, and she is one of the pickiest eaters I have ever seen. It is one thing after another. If Amy did not have college classes or work, she would sit at home most of the time and do nothing. Literally. Her only hobby is scrap booking, and she rarely does that. She reads books, but that is about the furthest extent of everything. Yeah, they are a good couple, but Lance is cookies and cream while Amy is still vanilla.

The reason why I say that Lance's relationship with Amy is the antithesis of what I am looking for is because there really is not a whole lot of chemistry. I think of a relationship, and I think of highs and lows, being able to do simple and complex things together, being able to laugh and enjoy the same things, being able to share one with the other and being honest even if the other does not like what was shared. Many words come to mind when I think of having an intimate relationship with a woman: trust, loyal, happy, flexibility, courtesy, sharing, love, and fun.

My first school crush was a girl named Callie MacArthur. I find that the timing of my crush and my arrival in Pennsylvania at a new school seemed weird, almost a cause-effect relationship. When my classes were attacking me, I somehow looked through the crowd and found that pretty girl that helped me through school subconsciously, a "bright light at the end of the tunnel." What is even more weird is the fact that I never talked to her the from elementary to high school. The last time I saw her, she still was as pretty as ever, a very smart woman, almost a bitch but just falling short of my definition of a bitch. I knew many guys who did not like her, but I think that was because of her attitude towards people in general; it was almost as if she was just passing through life and did not want anyone else to bother her. Even if I saw Callie today, I doubt I would ask her out simply because I would lose my words and I would stutter the whole time. I also doubt that she would be my soulmate simply because she is not the kind of woman I am looking for; I just could not see Callie as being the open, caring woman that I need in my life.

I still sometimes have dreams of those kids in elementary school making fun of me, the demons that will probably chase me to my death. I know that if one of them had ever tried making fun of me in high school, I would probably receive at least a 20-year sentence for first-degree murder. No one would look upon that "quiet, kind young man" quite the same after I used a common household object to slice the kid's jugular vein open or to bash his face until is becomes mush. However, I do know that finding my soulmate would calm those demons that will always haunt me.

I am the furthest thing from a Catholic, and yet, I cannot help but agree with Mother Teresa's words. True poverty does not lie within lack of wealth, but rather a lack of love and a wealth of loneliness.