www.simoncollier.ca

As I stood listening to a couple of colleagues discuss the technical details of a shared project a lady sitting nearby announced to nobody that she’s very busy at work. The other two continued talking and I gave an awkward nod in her direction, the only one to acknowledge that she spoke. The weak acknowledgement was designed to signal that I heard her speak but that I was interested in the discussion unfolding between the other two.

“Yeah, I don’t know how I’ll get it all done” she said to anybody close enough that she could trap into a conversation. Nobody responded.

“It’s all work that’s gotta be done,” she said with a sigh of desperate importance.

She looked lost. I wasn’t interested in what she had to say but the awkwardness of the situation caused me to submit to the battle for my (or anybody’s) attention and I turned to her and listened.

I couldn’t tell you what she was telling me. I nodded and repeated key words back and agreed feverishly with whatever it was she was saying, frowning with great empathy when the tone of her voice suggested that it was appropriate. But throughout the entire conversation my consciousness was consumed by a blinding terror of loneliness.

I don’t want to be old and lonely. I can tell myself that being alone at 28 is ok because I’m still young and there are a great many people and places and ideas to experience. But I’m truly scared that one day I will realise I am 40 or 50 and have been alone for many years. I worry that I will anaemically seek out the attention and approval of others to appease my feelings of emptiness and being unloved. I don’t want to be the lonely old man that tries to talk for a long time to busy store clerks because I have nobody at home that cares about what I say or think. It terrifies me to imagine being lonely. Hopeless. Unwanted. Unvalued.

It makes me want to scream in desperate, unrelenting fear that I will one day wake up and realise that I wish I hadn’t.