Sam calls me his 3 a.m. friend. Among its many interpretations, this means that we tend to catch up at 3 a.m. and speak extensively about 3 a.m. topics. Like loneliness.Ā
āYouāre lonely?ā Sam asked, when I stated it in passing one night.
I fumbled. I hadnāt thought much of saying this. To me, loneliness had never felt like something to be worried or embarrassed about. I considered it integral to the human condition. But I could feel the weight of the question.Ā
āWell yeah,ā I responded. āArenāt we all?ā
1.
We moved on to talk about other 3 a.m. things, like Taylor Swift, her relevance, her music, the way she queer baits. I told him about betty, remembering the first time I heard the song.Ā
I was with my friend Lux, both of us lay sprawled on her bed with Korean sheet masks plastered across our faces. We were a little high, had the fan turned on full speed.Ā
This was peak pandemic, the world was an open wound. But I snuck in a quick visit to her place around the time folklore dropped. As any responsible friend would, I insisted on playing the album while we waited the prescribed 20 minutes for our faces to soak in the moisture. First came exile, then my tears ricochet, and finally, betty. One delicious haunting after another, we nodded off to sleep.
Thinking of betty, I was taken back to that afternoon. For a while between a horrific time, everything was still and perfect ā my nose stuffed with the sweet smell of red ginseng, my face damp from a cool mask made chilly by sharp, whipping winds. And then there was Taylor, crooning wistfully about being 17 and giddy with impulsivity, a type of love, a type of loneliness.
2.
Sometimes I call Sam at 12 a.m., because he is my only friend who will be awake after Iāve spent an entire night arguing with my sister.Ā
āI donāt understand how she and I are so different,ā I say. āI hate that I have to wage my battles against her and her husband alone.āĀ
In saying this, I feel less alone.
We spoke of relations that turn resentful before they get a chance to grow into themselves. Of siblings and the ties that draw us towards each other, the knots that take forever and a half to untangle. Between it all, we meditated on the salient hope that things could get better. Somehow, someday.Ā
A few days later, once I calmed down, I thought of how my sister and I arenāt as different as I claimed. In fact, we are mirror images of each other. A belief that she holds in her right arm, I hold in my left. We sneer at the same things when we sneer at each other. There is a childhoodās worth of reference keys stored in what cracks us up.
When spring arrives and my nails grow long, my sister notices. She knows that this is the first time theyāve crossed my nail beds. Itās like the hands of a different person, she says. Even when she doesnāt always know who I am, she knows when I change.Ā
That winter, we promise to celebrate Christmas together. I was travelling and would only be back to Bangalore on 25th, it would have to be a late Christmas day dinner.
But while waiting for my flight back home, I could feel my face burn up and my body weaken. I popped a pill, slipped on an N95 mask, and lulled myself to sleep. As soon as I landed, I took a COVID test; it was positive.
My sister packed up her feast in tupperware boxes and Swiggy Genieād me a portion of everything.
That night, I sat cross legged on my bed, cloaked in fever and an unruly rage. But then I looked at the plate of painstakingly made abundance before me ā dinner rolls, mashed potatoes, spinach and burrata quiches, coleslaw, grilled tomatoes, lamb chops. I felt a tender gratitude press against my smote heart.Ā
This too was a type of loneliness.Ā
3.
Once I called Sam up in desperation while heating a plate of rajma chawal.Ā
It was 3 p.m., a time of the day thatās bright and hot, more suitable to talk about the assholes of the world. Like K, whom Iād just gone on a date with.Ā
K was horrible to me, the date was traumatizing. For a week after, I was lost inside my body. I woke up and went to sleep crying. Meals were onerous tasks, I was certain that I would just give up on food at some point.Ā
āTalk to me while I eat?ā I asked. Sam obliged.
We spoke about the audacity of men. About how asinine the search for a romantic partner on dating apps could be. We spoke about how lucky he and Assy were to have found each other the old school way. We spoke about Burger King. T.V. shows. Trauma.Ā Post-trauma.
We spoke from lunch to dinner, and then past midnight. We spoke till I had eaten twice and cried once, briefly. We spoke and we spoke as the loneliness of the night dissipated into my bones and sleep finally arrived. Ā
~Ā
I wasnāt able to tell Sam what I meant by loneliness, but Iāve been thinking about it ever since.
Of course, loneliness can arise from a lack of connection to people, or from feeling that you are unworthy of connection altogether. But thereās another type of loneliness too, one I often encounter. Itās intertwined with love, I usually feel them together.
This takes me back to one of my favourite poems, Allen Ginsbergās Song. In it, he says that the weight of the world is love. Under the burden of solitude, under the burden of dissatisfaction, the weight we carry is love.Ā
Then perhaps in its truest essence, loneliness is the negative space that exists around us, a space into which we love. We feel it as a juxtaposition between the callous expansiveness of this world and the singular immediacy of being held and witnessed.
Loneliness could be the blank canvas we live onto, a soft piercing, a gentle unfolding. Who knows, maybe itās not such a bad thing to feel so lonely after all?Ā
Iāve been thinking.Ā
š
Love,
Soumya
Celebrating š
My friend Nisha recently launched Kara Tales, a food blog thatās more than just recipes and reviews! Kara Tales is the kind of conversations you'd stumble into over a casual dinner. Here, food isn't just sustenance; it's the medium through which writers probe the deeper questions and find connection in the seemingly trivial.
You can check out the Kara Tales website here and follow them here.
Recomended reads š
When cake plays cupid ā a bakerās lens on finding love.
My four year old taught me how to breathe ā Maggie Smith discovers mindfulness.
Engineering myself ā Akshay Gajria was an engineer before he turned to writing. How do you fit that journey into an author bio?
How to stop dating and fall in love with your friends ā āWhat a powerful force friendship is, that it can alchemize an emotion like heartbreak into something that makes life feel as though itās tinged with magic.ā
Jam š¶
Thank you for reading! š
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As always you put a spin on things I can so relate to but havenāt quite considered that way before. Grateful for your friendship even if itās not at 3 a.m. šš