Don’t Be Alone II

It is strange to still be alone long after you have decided that not being alone anymore is the most important thing. 

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(The Americans, season 4, episode 8)

Philip (who Martha calls Clark, the name of the identity he used as Martha’s lover and eventual husband while using her to gain access to FBI intelligence) says, “You too,” and Martha, after making a joke about the improbability of her finding someone in Russia, where she doesn’t speak the language, relents and says, “Yeah, okay. Me too.” 

But of course, there’s no danger of Philip being alone–he has always had Elizabeth, his real partner, the one who truly knows him, and Martha–who perhaps appears plain and unremarkable–has very often been alone, her one serious relationship a ruse in which she was manipulated by a Russian spy. That’s gotta be a blow to your confidence. 

When you’ve been alone as long as I have, you start wondering if maybe you just need to either take what you can get and settle, or to accept that you’ll be spending your life alone. But when Martha is visited some time later in her apartment in Moscow and asked if she’s met anyone, she replies, “Nobody suitable.” The line suggests that Martha still has standards of her own, that despite entreating Philip to not be alone, she still lives her life as if it is better to be alone than to be with someone who is not “suitable.” And as much as I feel that my prolonged solitude is taking a real toll on my mind, body, and spirit, I, too, cannot bring myself to be with someone who I don’t feel is suitable.

People sometimes think this means I’m holding out for some unattainable notion of perfection, but it’s not that at all. It’s more like I’m holding out for someone with whom I feel safe revealing all of my flaws and imperfections, all the gaps in my knowledge that come from my lack of experience, all my vulnerabilities and struggles, and for that, I don’t want someone who strikes me as perfect at all. I just want someone I can feel a real connection with. In a world in which I constantly avoid the gaze of others because seeing and being seen only reminds me that I’m almost never seen as the person I really am, I want someone whose eyes I feel safe looking into.

In one scene in the new Hulu series Ramy, Ramy’s making out with Sarah, a woman he’s been hitting it off with, when she does E.

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By this time, Sarah’s already taken the E, and Ramy’s unwillingness to take it means that they’ll be in different worlds. The connection they were experiencing is severed (at least temporarily), and Ramy, because he’s not up for something that Sarah expected him to be up for, is alone for the night, while Sarah winds up connecting with someone else. I sometimes feel like I experience this in my own way, like all the things I’m not up for, or down for, or willing to just jump into, interfere with my ability to form the kind of connection I’m so desperate for, because people don’t know how to handle someone who operates so differently. But I can’t change where I’m at, I can’t change what I need. I need time and friendship and trust first, I need to get comfortable with somebody, I need to at least start really knowing a person before I’m at a place where anything can happen. 

Sometimes I feel like the world just isn’t set up anymore to allow for the kind of connection I’m looking for. It feels like everything is dating apps, and something about meeting on a dating app suggests that you’re looking to start at dating, and I don’t want to start there with anyone. But it’s so hard to just make friends anymore. 

And yet, as much as I love films and video games and books and music and the beauty of the natural world, they can’t be the answer to everything. The longer I stay alone, the emptier they feel, because I’m not sharing them with anyone. I need touch. I need tenderness. I need connection and closeness and compassion. I need vulnerability and realness. I need to give love at least as much as I need to receive it. I need to not be alone.

Anyway. I hope Martha found somebody suitable, eventually.

(Don’t Be Alone I)