“Mrs. Fixer
We call her Mrs. Fixer because she fixes
Everything for everybody.
If you need a ride, you call her,
Or a meal, or a telephone committee.
She'll find you an apartment or a part-time job,
Even a date if you're in the market.
And all the time she only wants someone to love her
But she's afraid to ask.
So she fixes everything for everybody instead
And you keep calling her when you need something
And forget to tell her that you love her.
So she'll probably die lonely
And have a big funeral
And everyone will tell about
The way she fixed things all the time.”
Source: Will You Be My Friend?
“Loneliness is an organ we call the brain,
So if you want out, good luck baby.
Go towards something. Foolishly.
The loneliness will eat us anyway,
But you can change how you taste:
A rock that never does
Or a twinkle that tried.”
Source: Can I Tell You Something?
“Because sober or not, until you start to tell the truth, you're going to be desperately lonely. Perhaps this is obvious, but I'm pretty sure it escapes most of us.
We know we're lonely...but we don't really know why...I felt a nagging ache of separateness I could not name. Despite being surrounded by people, having a big social life, more plans than I had time for, and a solid group of people I considered friends, I still felt very much alone. I felt alone in my marriage. I felt alone in my friendships, And actually being alone by myself? Forget it - that was intolerable...
Loneliness started to abate only when I began to really let people in and tell them the truth, and that took a long, long time.
The antidote to loneliness wasn't just being around others or sharing common ground. It was intimacy.
My friend Meadow's definition of intimacy...she says, "Intimacy is having a kind, compassionate witness to your truest thoughts and feelings."
Having a witness also means being seen. Really seen. In all our humanity - flaws and ugly bits and all. Even the most courageous of us are willing to go about 90 percent of the way there, but we hold on to that last 10 percent, the part that could allow us to be really known. Sobriety hasn't so much been about revealing the 90 percent but that last 10. The little bit I always want to keep to myself.
The problem is, 10 percent of withholding, or secretiveness, will still eventually contaminate the whole...And keeping 10 percent of yourself from your partner, or whomever you could trust with your heart, will make you 100 percent lonely.”
Source: We Are the Luckiest: The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life
“It is true that the real world of the soul is an invisible place, removed from the rush and chatter of crowds, and that the most important portion of life is the secret and solitary portion. Yet the most influential element even of this secluded world and this hidden life, is the element which consists of the ideas and feelings we habitually cherish in relation to our fellow-beings.”
Source: The Solitudes of Nature and of Man; or, The Loneliness of Human Life
“I came out here because I didn't want to rot at home alone. Could he even begin to conceive how perfectly wretched it was to have your entire life already planned for you when you were just seventeen?”
Source: With a Reckless Abandon
“I had lost so much love in this life and for this fading poet; love is life.
If I cannot love any longer, then my life is forfeit.”
Source: From Out of Feldspar
“There were also drawings of the creatures who live inside - how they eat, how they move, how they mate - because people forget about creatures who live in shells.”
Source: Where the Crawdads Sing
“This is the 10 percent withholding. It doesn't seem like a big deal, but right then they agreed it was okay to lie to each other - even if only a little...But they were always operating just left of center, hovering around the truth of who they were, unwilling to life the film from their eyes.
It was a lot safer this way, but it was also extraordinarily lonely...
It would have been a risk to call him out on the little fudging of the truth...she would have had to withstand a moment of discomfort...it might have allowed then to actually fins an honest ground zero from which to build something.”
Source: We Are the Luckiest: The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life
“There are many disappointed and discontented men and women, exasperated with society, uneasy with seclusion, galled by the bonds of the world when they feel its multitudinous emulation, unable to enjoy freedom and repose when they retreat into solitude.”
Source: The Solitudes of Nature and of Man; or, The Loneliness of Human Life
“The higher we look on the scale of strength and individuality, the more isolated we see that the nature and habits of creatures are. The eagle chooses his eyrie in the bleakest solitude; the condor affects the deserted empyrean; the leopard prowls through the jungle by himself; the lion has a lonely lair. So with men. While savages, like the Hottentots, gibber in their kraals, and, among civilized nations, the dissipated and the frivolous collect in clubs and assemblies, dreading to be left in seclusion, the poet loves his solitary walk, the saint retreats to be closeted with God, and the philosopher wraps himself in immensity.”
Source: The Solitudes of Nature and of Man; or, The Loneliness of Human Life