“How’s your pizza?”

“It’s good”, I replied as I gazed at my wife, trying to intently read her face. I squeezed her hand lightly.

“What’s up?”, she asked with a curious smile.

“Oh, nothing…just looking at you.”

I didn’t know how to explain, when I barely understood it myself. After 3 decades of living, I’ve finally begun to put a finger on this feeling which I’ve felt my whole life, on and off. It has visited me at the most unexpected of times. But even after all these years, its true nature had eluded me. I didn’t know what it was or from where it arose. But that has begun to change.

What I’ve been experiencing is loneliness. But it’s not the kind that can be brushed aside by having a chat, or going to a movie or dinner together. I have a lot of close relationships, and I feel this way despite all these people in my life. It’s a feeling of not being able to connect. It’s like having an invisible wall around myself. Yes, I feel disconnected. Or rather I’ve begun to acutely realize that I’m disconnected, or perhaps was never connected in the first place.

I’m slipping through life without being touched by anything. All that anyone has come in contact with is my body, or my thoughts and emotions as conveyed by words. All that I come in contact with is my impression of you, instead of you, as interpreted by my mind. I feel choked. I feel like I can’t express myself, no matter how intricately I arrange my words. I cannot bring myself over to you. Something of me gets left behind inevitably. I wish I could have you step into my head and see what I see. “Here. This. This is the world that I live in. Do you see it? Can you touch it? Or are you stuck in your own world, which is invisible to me?” I wish I could step inside your head. As I’m getting older, this feeling is becoming more intense and frequent. It’s morphing into fear. I’m afraid that I’ll die alone after having lived alone in a bubble. And my intimate relationships bring the cruelest of reminders. It is in my wife’s tight embraces that I feel the loneliest. That’s when I realize acutely that all my relationships are fleeting illusions of togetherness. Desperate attempts to deny that one fact which we’re too scared to acknowledge – that we’re all alone here.

Time is ticking by and I’m too tired to have to go back to page one of my book over and over again. “Hi, my name is this. I grew up here. I like this. I support this political ideology. I’m fan of this team”. Similar interests, common desires, and shared fears, which used to make me feel connected, seem meaningless now. I don’t have enough time to build my world for you, brick by brick. And even if I did, I wouldn’t know how. Language doesn’t have as high a resolution as experiences and feelings. Whatever my words manage to convey are mere waves in the ocean of experience. Words are unfaithful messengers which are suitable only for trivial exchanges. Can you hear the scream raging inside me? Or can you only hear the arrangement of words orchestrated by my intellect?

It’s like I’m living with a terrible secret, eager to share it with someone. I want to be read from cover to cover. I want to pour into you every thought that ricochets through my mind and every emotion that stirs in my heart. Into someone. I don’t want to be loved or respected. I want to be touched, to be absorbed. It’s getting too lonely in here. I want to dissolve into something other than myself. I feel like I’m sinking into myself. Is there someone who can hold my hand and pull me out? I don’t want to die without ever really meeting someone. There’s got to be one of you 7 billion, who can feel my pulse. I don’t want to die with emotional residue. I want to express all that there’s to be expressed. I want to empty myself. I want to feel light and float away. And not sink into the darkness of death, tied to the weight of unspoken feelings.

I don’t want to turn into a caricature after I die. I don’t want to continue as partial fragments of memory. As a distorted image. As someone who could not be read fully by the living, nor could be erased entirely by death: as a ghost.

I wonder if you too feel this way. Do you copy me?