alone again
There’s a bird on a power line opposite my apartment building and I’m worried it’s lonely. As soon as the worry hits me though, the excuses accompany it: maybe it wants alone time, maybe it’s playing hide and seek, maybe it only feels like it can breathe when it’s away from the rest of the flock, maybe, maybe, maybe.
Maybe, the bird is watching me too. I leave my room to write about the bird (as one does), and while I’m gone, the bird leaves. Is it hopeless to think it flew away with someone?
The thing is, I keep seeing lonely animals. The lone goose in a man-made pond in front of a Hindu temple. The outdoor cat that followed me home from a park, into my apartment building, and stopped right in front of my neighbors door, coxing me into knocking on a neighbor's door for the first time in my adult life. The wild turkey trying to drink out of a puddle with baby chicks, surprised when they all scatter away in fear. The bird this morning. Me. Alone. Everyone, alone.
Fuck loneliness, I wanted to say — far before I knew the meaning of either word. Fuck loneliness, I still say now. The emptiness, the ache, it’s just — that poor bird. That poor goose. That poor cat. Are they okay? Will they survive? (How the fuck did I survive?)
I recently saw a chart for suicidal ideation and depression rates from early 2000s to present day. The rates, they start exponentially climbing exactly around my high school years. When I first saw the chart I thought — damn, I can’t believe how much sway I had on the whole US population. Sometimes my brain does that, takes all the suffering in the world and says here — this is your fault, deal with it.
Usually, I want to see it all burn. I want to go back. Maybe before the agricultural revolution. Sometimes, I think, I could settle for before the Internet. I keep thinking about my six year old cousins. Their eyes glazed over as I walk into a room where they’re watching YouTube shorts. “Too boring” they now say to TV shows and movies and they won’t even consider glancing at a board game.
And damnit now the bird is back. In the same spot. Alone. Again. And now I’m still here, looking out the window waiting for a FedEx truck on a Friday morning. My partner is on a work call talking about serving sizes and on days like this I want the air so badly to taste like hope.