Back then, I've understood loneliness to be just another part of life. An impossible acquaintance to rid. Yet, it was perfectly benign. Once you've mapped out the boundaries of loneliness it had began to feel more like a chore than an emotion. Just another variable in life that I needed to deal with. Of course, appearances can be deceiving. Loneliness wasn't benign. It carried a heavy price; you'd have to suffer not feeling anything at all. Outside, life continued on but I wouldn't respond. I had forgotten how.
Post-modernism.
I used to believe that it didn't matter how horrible I treated someone. It would be justified if I treated myself worse. If I upheld certain values and expected people to live by them, it would be all okay as long as I accounted myself by even more stringent values. The saying, 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you', was still in effect. If I got angry with someone because she had disappointed me, the anger would be justified because I've gotten even more upset with myself when the same mistake was made by me. It was all relative. Hence, right or wrong only existed in contextual, perspective-dependent basis. It was merely a perception.
Time passed and I realized that not everyone was so thick-skinned like me. People got hurt. But I only took pity. Life is tough and I had shown them a piece of it. I wasn't sorry. They didn't understand it. It was their fault! I believed tears were a sign of weakness. And I wouldn't ask for help, ever. Dependence was admitting defeat. I would continue this phase for years, distancing myself more and more from people. And slowly I found myself alone. But I'd continue, until I couldn't feel anything. Life had become a clockwork. There was no pulse, only ticks.
Love.
The numbness persisted. It was a while before I felt the pain. I couldn't go on like that anymore. It wasn't humane; all reality had been sealed off and by lack of, I was suffocating. The pain, which felt like a dryness I could not quench, would grow more and more. Then came the hunger. I was hungry for something real. I wouldn't care what it was, as long as it was real and genuine. Yet, I'd still try to ignore the pain. But then something happened. I saw something, or what was about to come. I saw darkness brewing and the malevolent bane it had conceived. Eventually, it would swallow me whole. I got scared. I started to crumble down the very walls I've built around me. I'd turn back and open myself up again, slowly. Eventually, reality started to sink back in and I was adjusting again.
I had started reading more. I frequented morning and afternoon teas. I was playing the guitar again. Writing, photography, design, music, and architecture seemed fun. What seemed like strenuous endeavors before became enjoyable. The subway rides to school became a lot less mundane, silence became a lot less uncomfortable. Flowers seemed brighter, air crisper, conversations were more intriguing, and the city became more interesting. Food had become more palatable and I'd go out more with my friends, meet new people and see new things. Requisites for love and life had taken toll and unbeknownst to me then, months after, in the following spring, I would fall in love.
"What is real?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but really loves you, then you become real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
Excerpt from The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams
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