A Sickening Amount Of Solitude
It is allowed to be too much.
Welcome to Cheaper Than Therapy, a healing newsletter for 80s babies by Shani Silver. This newsletter does not publish free content, but if you’d like to read it you can subscribe here. Thank you for enjoying the work of independent writers.
If you thought people freaking out about that whole pandemic/isolation shit was adorable, this one’s for you. This is for those whose lives looked really similar to 2020 back in 2017. The alone ones, the single ones, the ones who spend too much time scrolling through cute little dinners and parties and events without ever getting invited to them. Those who will understand that this is not a pity party, this is a celebration of survival. A reflection on how we’ve lived through—and are perhaps still living through—more alone time than is reasonable for a human being to stomach. I’ve been the unseen, the overlooked, and I’m trying to nurture my mental health in spite of all of it, right along with you.
I hear the struggles of partnered people, of parents, of those who want to be parents, the very normal and valid difficulties of being a person during those stages of life. My heart empathizes to the extent of its ability and what love I have to share, they’ll receive. But honestly, these people get heard enough. I’m tired of pain only “counting” once you’re a real person, once you’re partnered. Until then it’s as though you’re an unbaked lump of human dough, easy to ignore under a tea towel as it proofs. We never hear from those of us who have been chained to life’s little starting line the whole time, never progressing forward, permanently trying, longing, and seemingly, potentially… permanently alone. It actually is possible to be alone too much, and the real kick in the dick is that once you arrive at “too much,” alone keeps going, and it shows you what it can do to people like us.