”The world is quiet here” - V.F.D. Motto, A Series of Unfortunate Events”
The world is quiet here. The world is quiet in my mind, where roiling questions have tormented me for the past few days. The world was quiet on the street corner at 1 am where I walked away from my senior year forever, with slow blinking lights waiting for the excitement of wheels. The world is quiet here in my bedroom, where I am alone and even the insects have quieted their cries.
Usually when it's quiet and I'm alone, I become rather depressed (wow, big surprise from the guy who keeps writing about constantly being lonely). But tonight, I don't quite feel that. I don't even feel the subtleties of melancholia. Instead, I feel sort of content. Alone, certainly, but content. Full in my chest, like I'm whole, for the first time in a long time.
I graduated this morning, so naturally I've been doing a lot of thinking. Thinking is a dangerous thing for me. It too often leads me to detached, abject sadness that unfurls down from my brain through to my heart. Today, it left me in the middle of a party with many of my fellow graduates feeling alone and something else a bit ineffable. Dissatisfaction, maybe? Dissatisfied with the knowledge that tonight was probably the last time I will see many of my classmates, and that there was no good way to say goodbye, and dissatisfied by the feeling that no one else seemed to care quite as much. So how did I get from there, depressed in a corner of a party, to being “content”?
The answer is other people. It kind of always is. One friend sat with me for a while and walked around with me, making me feel loved even though I didn't know what to say or how to express my feelings. What impacted me most of all, however, was two conversations I held while watching the bonfire. One with an old friend, sitting next to the fire, who told me to look outward. The other, with a newer friend, standing next to the fire, who told me to look inward. Different conversations, but not contrary ones; complementary. Two pieces of a puzzle, one they didn't know they were crafting, and one I didn't know I needed to be woven.
I would recount them in great detail if I could, and if it wouldn’t be incredibly boring to the reader. Great conversations are meant to be experienced, and built on the backs of complex and storied relationships. But I will try. Although full disclosure that by the time I am writing these words, it’s been a few days, so my memory is even hazier than usual.
My first conversationalist was an old and dear friend whom I’ll call Jane; she knows me well, and speaks with world-weary wisdom I value deeply. I told her how I was feeling, feelings I don’t even remember clearly anymore, about imagining a bleak future for myself and feeling alienated from the people around me. What I like about talking to her is that she challenges me, but in a comfortable way that makes me think rather than feel defensive or judged. She listened and we went back and forth about the future, friendships, the virtues of overthinking, and if I am missing something fundamentally human. That last part was probably the most important thought. I’ve felt for a long time that I needed someone or something to fix me; it’s why I’ve always been so desperate for a relationship, hoping that one could fix me. You’ve heard “I can fix him,” but I’m more of a “can they fix me” type of guy, I guess. Of course, I’ve since realized that no one is perfect and no one can fix me, but that either means I’m irreparable or that there’s nothing to fix. Jane told me to stop looking at other people to fix me, to stop looking for everyone to be the perfect friend or partner or whatever else. She very subtly, but aptly, told me I’m a narcissistic prick and that I should simply look outward, rather than being so self-absorbed that I can’t be happy. There was a strong religious element to everything that I still am unsure about, but it really didn’t matter what she said or what I said (or maybe I’m just saying that because I can’t remember what she said) because what simply mattered was us sitting there and talking. Talking like old friends trying to figure out life, and knowing that we will always come up short.
The second of these conversations was with a less familiar friend, one I’ve only been talking to more recently. We’ll call him Joey. If Jane told me to look outward, Joey reminded me to look inward. We talked about how we never quite found our people; I told him his friends didn’t really seem like him since he’s an incredibly genuine and thoughtful person, which I don’t imagine they are, but he said that they were all he had and didn’t seem to mind. I, meanwhile, have so many friends, but I rarely feel “chosen” or included by anyone. Despite that, he told me something which really stuck with me: that I have “something special” that makes me care about everyone, from close friends to strangers, that I should never lose. My first reaction was to tell him that eventually, caring about everyone hurts when no one seems to care about you in return. But after I thought about it for a moment, I realized how much it meant to me. A few people have told me similar things over the past week, and it made me feel appreciated for the care that I do have for others. I realized then that people do appreciate me, which makes me feel lucky and reassures me that I’m on the right path. The people who don’t appreciate me, meanwhile? They don’t need to weigh on my mind when I have people like Joey; they don’t even need to be important parts of my life. This is how he told me to look inward. He reminded me (in indirect terms) that when I look past my own neuroticism, perfectionism, and pessimism, there is something inside of me that is unique and special and loved by others, and that it will be okay as long as I keep that alive. So in a way, I have to look past myself (read: get over myself) to really see myself. Of course, that doesn’t mean I’m not flawed or anything, but it does mean that I have redeemable qualities that other people see, which I should see too before I drown myself in ravenous self-cannibalistic overthinking.
Of course, I’m not sure how much I’m really remembering these conversations. Maybe I’ve come away from them with completely different ideas than Jane and Joey, but that’s okay. I can’t neatly distill these conversations into bullet points or pithy pieces of advice. My friends are not employed to solve my problems, nor do they have the precision of a TED Talk in casual conversation. They did make good points, even if I wasn’t fully convinced by everything, but what really impacted me was just being able to talk it out in casual, loving conversation that helped me see beyond my own perspective to find a world that is less bleak than I thought. A world of quiet.
I got that quote: “The world is quiet here” from Daniel Handler/Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. It’s the motto of the enigmatic organization V.F.D. (Volunteer Fire Department) because it is their mission to make the world quiet, not by stifling it, but by putting out all manner of fires (real of otherwise). It’s the quiet in which you read a good book, or sit with your thoughts or loved ones. So I say now that the world is quiet because I have found some semblance of peace. Of course, life is not perfect, and I am still uncertain and anxious about many things. I still worry about loneliness, and I still mourn the loss of the familiarity of high school, but it’s different now, verging on tolerable. It’s still difficult for me to let myself be happy, but maybe I’m getting there. At least for now.
