the weight of waiting
On the season finale of The Americans which aired this week, a character laments the years he spent being invisible and the toll that loneliness has taken on his life in his deathbed. I know the importance of seeing and being seen. And one of my fears is coming to the end of my life having spent it alone, desperately wishing I could load an earlier saved game and try other things in the hopes of finding real love and partnership. Already in my weakest moments the fact that I can never get all the empty years of my life back sometimes feels like a fountain of bitterness inside me, though I absolutely believe that it is possible for me to find a connection that helps me accept the emptiness that came before as the path I had to take to lead me to that life.
On The Americans, William says “The absence of closeness makes you dry inside.” And I think about how the hardest part of being alone is not the lack of love that you receive, but the inability to give your love to someone you love. I think that love is replenished in the giving, and while William’s words suggest that love not given evaporates and leaves you dry, I think that it just sits inside you, weighing you down, like spoiled milk.
Last night, I went to a screening of a short film made by a friend of mine that is all about who we see and who we don’t, and why. There’s a line in the film when one character is talking about Casablanca that goes something like, “When Rick looks at Ilsa, it’s more than love. It’s like he’s saying she’s real.” Yeah.
When something happens in a person’s life, when they experience a loss, like a breakup, we understand that they might be struggling. But it is harder for people to understand that someone might be struggling precisely because of the absence of something happening in their lives. Which only makes it harder for the person struggling, not knowing how to talk about the fact that they are having a hard time not because anything has changed but because nothing has, because it is yet another day in yet another week in yet another month in yet another year in a string of years of feeling lonely and isolated.
I used to wonder who I would be today if I’d been assigned female at birth. Now I more often wonder how I’d be different if there were partnership and closeness in my life. What does loneliness do, I can’t help but wonder sometimes, to my heart, my mind, my mood, my demeanor, my whole sense of my place in the world, whether I’m visible or invisible.
It’s not because I’m trans, though that certainly doesn’t make it easier, or make it statistically any more likely for me to meet someone I’m into who’s also into me. It’s because I’m lucky if I meet one person every few years who opens me up in the way a person has to open me up for me to want to be with them.











from Manhattan Romance
Sometimes I wake up with my thoughts an intense fixed point, a black hole of wordless need that obliterates any other thoughts: the need to love and be loved, touch and be touched, see and be seen.
Somehow, although the weight of waiting seems insurmountable, I get up and head out into the world, and some kind of energy carries me through the day. Maybe there are friendly smiles from strangers on the street, maybe there’s a chat with a friend via text or on Facebook or Twitter or maybe even IRL, and these things can feel lifesaving. But still sometimes I feel like a shell of a person and I’m amazed that everyone can’t just see right through me.
And always I have to come back to just myself. To the reality that there isn’t someone to tell about my day, or someone to expand my experience by telling me about theirs. Nobody to lift me up when I’m feeling low just by being there, or to validate my worth by finding comfort in my presence.
Everything feels very small and I think, this isn’t right. People aren’t supposed to live this way, or at least I’m not.
I think things can change. But I can’t just make them change. I go places and do things, never with the expectation or even the hope of something happening, but always with an acknowledgment of the possibility. Maybe I will meet someone here. It could happen. I know it could.
You can say “you go about things the wrong way” if you want to. I won’t argue with you. But I can only do what feels real and true for me.
There’s a dog who hangs out at a store I pass frequently.

He must belong to the owners or something. And he’s just the most patient dog. I see him just looking down the street, as if he’s waiting for someone in particular to come along, someone special. And other people talk to him and pet him, and he’s not rude about it, but he just seems utterly unfazed by it. He barely reacts.
One day, I saw this dog excitedly get up and start leaping with joy because someone he knew, someone special, was walking up the street.
I think this dog and I have a lot in common.
Notes
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