Lonely Friendships

Artist: Jekein Lato-Unah

I swipe every other second to find my friends, and when I am very desperate, some acquaintances.

I tap on the screen, very quickly, as though if I delay my response for over a minute I will be left all alone.

Sometimes I swipe so fast that my eyes can’t keep up. It is all a blur of perfection, success, achievement, the best life, the wonderful weddings and adventurous holidays spent in places I may have been but could never afford with the way my current bank account set up.

Unthinking, hypnotised, in a trance. I come to mid-swipe, after I have found nothing of consequence and gleaned no new information, feeling disoriented and immensely dissatisfied. When did I pick up this device in the first place?

I scroll and I look for the conversations I feel like having, but I find none. My phone rings and I ignore it. Someone is looking for me, but somehow, I feel alone.

Because I am. I refuse to connect or engage or converse. Too lazy, can’t be bothered. It is easier to hide behind the mask of texts. No need to explain why my face looks sad or stop my eyes from looking bored or divulge the reason I am holding an almost empty pint of ice cream that certainly was full ten minutes ago.

I wonder if it is better to be alone in a room full of people or alone with a device full of connections or alone with myself.

All three seem pretty dire. Perhaps they are all the same thing.

Is it still rejection when you call someone three times and they don’t return your call once, but when you text they reply? To me, it is like they are saying - I have accepted your virtual self, but I am not ready to deal with any more of your person in my space.

It feels terrible to have a presence that is not fully present. Of course, I have been such a presence, only physically present, with my mind and my eyes in a different place and offered to a different set of people than those that are sitting right in front of me. I don’t mean to, but my divided attention says it all - I would rather be speaking with them. You are here with me, so I take you for granted. Or perhaps, more legitimately, you have annoyed me, so I am ignoring you.

Maybe it is just that my attention span is incapable of handling too much of what and who is in front of me. So it flies around and around to other places for bursts of instant amusement or intrigue. “I am sorry I am not paying you that much attention. It is just that you are not as funny as this guy on that page on my screen.” And, “I am sorry that I cannot listen fully to what you are saying. This thing I am reading is just more juicy and dramatic than whatever it is that you are struggling with.” “What was that? Sorry, I missed what you were saying. Can you just say it one more time please”

So we hurt and we hurt. We ostracise and we feel ostracised and it is a whirlwind of individual and collective self destruction.

The most interconnected network.

The loneliest existence.

The lack of truth or reality.

The painfulness of being still.

Broken

And terribly alone

O.F.P.

12 October 2019