Fullness That Will Not Be Achieved

Posted on June 25, 2005 in Disappointment

In his famous “No Man is An Island” sermon, John Donne writes “Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.” One might extend that to those who make our voices into sirens. Don’t ask for who those who suffer cry. They cry for you.

gulnaz is one of those rare bloggers who strives to make everyone who comes to her blog welcome. In a recent article that received quite a bit of comment (36) she talked about the restlessness she felt and her memories of a friend who came in and out of touch. I wrote:

When one is a rare type — particularly in a society which is asked each day to conform — one is shunned for one’s uniqueness, no matter how harmless.

I have come to the conclusion that I will never find acceptance in American society or, for that matter, anywhere else. There’s a sense of belongingness that is just missing. You can’t will that unilaterally: it must come back to you from others, no matter what the social workers and therapists tell you. You must be liked. It’s part of your meaning.

I am coming to the conclusion that I will not be liked as I should be liked, but I will be kind nonetheless. To like and to love me requires either that you are very much like me or that you are willing — as I have been willing — to love unconditionally. As I see it, there is me and there are the Others, the ones who constantly put the blame on my loneliness on me. They talk about “choices” as if my love for classical music, Barbara Kingsolver novels, photography, poetry, agnosticism, etc. should be reasons to not spend time with me.

I’m sensitive, caring. If someone I know is in crisis, I do my best to help her or him. But often, in that crisis and almost always afterwards, I am forgotten. Who can say to that person “Now that you’ve worn me out, please show some gratitude, the unconditional love that I gave you.” And I don’t get it.

We’re told that we should seek people out who share our interests. And I don’t get sought much because I don’t have interests that are shared by others. In another time, I might have been a shaman or a seer living on the fringe of a village. People would have come to me, sought my counsel, given me food and, more importantly, company.

I live on the edge of the town now, in a condo a few hundred yards from wilderness. I spend my days alone. Lithium — for one — stabilizes me so that I do not rise and fall like the morning star. The medications that I take cannot change other people. Thus I cannot be fully realized as a person. Unsought, this mind of mine folds in on itself and muses upon the completeness it cannot obtain. I must accept loneliness even if it means that part of my self-identity is as blank as the face that cloud-robed Venus shows to astronomers.

Don’t tell me not to mind this.