Loneliness can become a physical thing, a person that sits beside you on the bus when no one else will. It becomes a companion in the way that the absence of something sometimes can; like the empty place at your table that will always be the person who’s missing; or the smell of smoke that summons a phantom limb between your fingers, where the stains are just starting to fade.
My loneliness is a girl. She wears a black knit toque and sits two row in front of me, the only crisp thing in my out-of-focus world. Her hair is that almost-blonde that really ought to be called brown, and if she looked at me I imagine her eyes would be grey, cold and clear and deep.
She never looks at me, of course.
I can’t remember the exact moment the world slipped away from me. I suppose these things don’t happen suddenly, by their very nature. For the world to forget you it has to be a gradual slip, incremental shifts sideways. You stop raising your eyes, until only your own feet are in focus. You go for days without hearing a single word in the voices raised around you. You sit at the back of a string of buses, trying to find one that can take you away; but they all take you with them. And then one day…
You realise the driver forgot to punch your ticket; but when you try to give it to him, he doesn’t look your way. You stop for directions in a little bodega by a scrap of concrete they call a park, and the man behind the counter doesn’t look up. You blink sleep from your eyes but nothing comes clear. You wonder how many days it’s been since you were hungry, or thirsty.
You wonder when you died.
The silence isn’t so bad. Sounds are muted, like children playing in a park across a busy street, but you can still hear music if you strain. The emptiness in your chest doesn’t feel like anything, and you only notice it when you stop and think about your heartbeat. It’s the loneliness that gets to you – the endless melancholy of a quiet three a.m. that never ends. You want to touch her, run your fingers through the wildness of her hair, but of course loneliness can never quite be caught. She stands when you do, walks when you go, lets her hand fall so it almost touches yours… but never quite does.
Is every ghost someone like me? You don’t die so much as drift away, just a missing face that no one is looking for, an emptiness in already empty space. And is my loneliness just like me, another set of footprints on a dusty road, walking one step away from her loneliness and wondering why I never lift my hand to touch hers? Maybe if I did, if I had the courage, had the strength. Maybe, if I just…
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Image courtesy of Stuart Thursby. Stuart is an art director and photographer, currently adventuring in the wilds of Germany, where this photo was taken. To see more of his work, or to check out his portfolio, please visit StuartThursby.com.