The Romance of Loneliness
For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers: our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding. - I Chronicles 29:15
The feeling of not belonging in the world is probably fairly universal, and yet so specific and personal- if we all feel like “strangers and aliens” in the world at times, I imagine we do so in our own peculiar ways. Growing up, I always felt too sensitive, too perceptive, too dreamy and weird and otherworldly to ever really fit in with the rest of humanity. This is of course very narcissistic, as in a sense I felt I was too good for the world. But maybe we all are too good for the world, and that is what makes us beautiful.
I read a book some years ago, the novel Housekeeping by the great Marilynne Robinson. It’s about two sisters living with the trauma of their shared history, of tragic death and disappointment and suicide in their family, and the way they choose to live with the ghosts of the past. The narrator, Ruth, retreats ever further into her own interior world, one in which she remains conversant with her memories and the worlds contained within, becoming more uniquely herself and yet somehow less human. Her sister, Lucille, chooses to reject the eccentric introversion that seems to be a family trait and chooses conformity, comfort, and conventionality, and in doing so attempts to shut out the ghosts and the memories that she fears will draw her into madness. Ruth on the other hand becomes something of a ghost herself, learning to be indifferent to the cold and wind and wet, riding the rails and never staying in one place for long, never allowing her impression to linger, and always observing the lives others live but never participating. Lucille has the comfort of people and society and civilization, but in rejecting her own history loses that which makes her unique. Ruth becomes so conversant with her history and the ghosts that inhabit it that in a sense she is carried away by it, cast upon the wind, never tethered to the here and now of place and people and community.
It is a beautifully written and haunting book. As a reader, I identified with Ruth. I understand the fear of conformity, the worry that by following the rules and conventions of society, the essential truth of oneself will be suppressed and ultimately lost. When you feel like nobody understands you and nobody ever will, there’s a romance to the idea of withdrawing, of isolating, and only ever having to answer to yourself, your one true soul mate.
And there is indeed a tragedy to Lucille’s choices, a sense that by rejecting her history, however sad it may be, she loses something valuable, and one intuits that the relationships she forms will always be lacking, because she will never approach them as herself but instead as the persona she has created in order to gain acceptance. But of course Ruth’s is also profoundly sad as she has rejected connection altogether (with the exception of her Aunt Sylvie, whose path of transience and mien of otherworldly singularity she adopts).
The struggle between the two is a struggle I (and many of us) know well. I want to be myself, to be like nobody else, and yet I want to belong. I want to be understood, and yet I want to believe I am too complex to be fully comprehended. I want to be free of the weight of my history and I yet I know it is inextricably woven into my identity. Right now I am something of a transient myself. I love the thrill of seeing new places, places untainted by memory, and yet I long for rootedness and groundedness. And while I know conformity is soul killing, so too is unending introspective isolation. I still haven’t found the balance between the two. I’m better than I used to be. I have people I love who help to center me. But the path of Sylvie and Ruth continues to allure, pulling me down the dark corridors of my own mind and beckoning me to light out for the territories.
