https://www.reddit.

com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/3qmub4/youve_never_met_the_lone
liest_person/
My first two years in college I was invisible. I scored a single room on the 4th
floor of the dorms. I had very little social skill, and I'm an introvert by nat
ure, so I simply stayed inside.
My room was right outside the elevator, so my social interaction was found in ru
nning to the door when I heard people walking by in the hallway. As they waited
on the elevator, I would watch them through my peephole. I would quietly stand t
here and listen to their conversations. I got to know each of them by name. Wher
e they came from. What they were like. I would make up stories to fill in the ga
ps about their lives and relationships. I knew everyone on my floor. But none of
them even knew I existed.
I remember in my first year, I was walking across campus listening to headphones
and I passed a guy that I had graduated from highschool with. He was walked the
other direction. As I passed him he smiled, stopped and started to talk to me,
but I couldn't hear him and kept on walking, and it was several minutes later be
fore I recognized what had even happened. It had become completely beyond my com
prehension that someone would interact with me. I had passed through a veil into
a very dark place.
I never spoke. I sat in the back of class, avoided eye contact. Arrived late, le
ft immediately. I would go days without saying a single word out loud. My mom wo
uld call on the phone about once a week or so. I would answer and my voice wasn'
t even capable of making sounds.
Slowly my sleep schedule became skewed. I would sleep between classes during the
day, and stay up all night. I walked the streets and kicked light poles so snow
would fall on my head. I don't know why I would do this. But it was thrilling.
Eventually, I stopped showing up to classes all together. It just didn't interes
t me. It was pointless. I'm embarrassed by my transcripts from those first years
, because it looks like I was drunk the whole time, but I never did any of that
sort of thing. I just lost touch with myself when I lost touch with society, and
it made everything turn grey and useless. What was the point?
I felt like something was wrong, my second year. I started thinking of ways to f
orce myself out into social groups. I joined a campus wide game called "Assassin
". This was well before the days of school shootings. The point of the game was
to randomly hand out pictures of everyone that was playing the game. Everyone ha
d a "target" and everyone was someone else's "Target". You had to sneak up on yo
ur "target" and clip a clothes pin to their shirt without them seeing you, and t
hey would be out of the game, and you could get a new target. I got my picture t
aken and joined the game. I never even went to talk to the kid in charge to get
my "target". But I spent the rest of the year sitting in the remotest corner of
the cafeteria with my back to the wall. Long after the game was probably over. I
was still playing. Paranoid. Delusional. In my mind, always fleeing.
I never would have called myself lonely. I wouldn't have called myself depressed
really. I was just an outline, invisible in the crowd. A forgettable face. A fo
rgettable name. Nobody. Now, I look back on this, and I realize, I was depressed
. I was lost.
I gave up on college and it was the best thing I ever did. I traveled. I did hum
anitarian work in Eastern Europe. I was forced into difficult situations with pe
ople that I had to work with on a team. I grew to understand myself and how I re
lated to other people and I found out that I was needed in a larger context than
myself. I had value. Real value to other people. I opened my eyes, and stopped
looking through a peephole at the world. I opened a door and stepped through.
I'm married now. I have three wonderful children that know their dad as a funny
outgoing talkative man. I went back to school and finished my degree. But I stil
l carry that young man with me. He haunts me. And having been there, I see him e
verywhere. The lonely and depressed outnumber all of us. And I have made it my g
oal to hunt them down and drag them out into the light, because I can't stand th
e thought of anyone living in that place.
Please. Do not isolate yourself. Do not seek that. There are others out there. A

nd if you are one of the people that feels stable and happy in life, good for yo
u, but don't be selfish with that. Don't be afraid to hunt these people down and
draw them out of themselves. Don't be afraid to sit down at a table with someon
e that is eating alone. Or to ask someone how they are doing if you happen to be
walking near them on the street. View everyone as having value, and treat them
that way. Seek them out and tell them, bluntly, boldly, that they are worth know
ing and interacting with. And you will probably find someone truly interesting w
ith a great deal to say.
permalink
Coping with Death
Alright, here goes. I'm old. What that means is that I've survived (so far) and
a lot of people I've known and loved did not. I've lost friends, best friends, a
cquaintances, co-workers, grandparents, mom, relatives, teachers, mentors, stude
nts, neighbors, and a host of other folks. I have no children, and I can't imagi
ne the pain it must be to lose a child. But here's my two cents.
I wish I could say you get used to people dying. I never did. I don't want to. I
t tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love dies, no matter the circumsta
nces. But I don't want it to "not matter". I don't want it to be something that
just passes. My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I ha
d for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love. So be it.
Scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that I can love deeply and
live deeply and be cut, or even gouged, and that I can heal and continue to live
and continue to love. And the scar tissue is stronger than the original flesh e
ver was. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are only ugly to people who can't
see.
As for grief, you'll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you
're drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you remin
ds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more.
And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on
for a while. Maybe it's some physical thing. Maybe it's a happy memory or a pho
tograph. Maybe it's a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do i
s float. Stay alive. In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash ove
r you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don't even give you time to
catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe wee
ks, maybe months, you'll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come f
urther apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. Bu
t in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what's going to
trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the sme
ll of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything...and the wave comes crashi
ng. But in between waves, there is life.
Somewhere down the line, and it's different for everybody, you find that the wav
es are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come
further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas
, or landing at O'Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yo
urself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come
out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piec
e of the wreckage, but you'll come out.
Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don't real
ly want them to. But you learn that you'll survive them. And other waves will co
me. And you'll survive them too. If you're lucky, you'll have lots of scars from
lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks.