The Well of Loneliness

There are few instances in life where you get to peek through someone’s very essence. Most people will act only in ways that correspond to the image that they are trying to portray to their audience, whoever the audience might be – a first date, intimate lover, friend or sister. Sociologists even have a term for this: impression management, coined by the symbolic interactionist Erving Goffman.

Leafing through someone’s album is probably right up there in deciphering volumes about the person in question. I happened to stumble upon my sister’s album today as I was instructed to water her parched plants while she visits her fiancé abroad. I came upon this album of gargantuan proportions, reminiscent of a bygone era, as I was eying her bookshelf for potential novels. I made myself comfortable on her not-so-comfortable new age sofa, and slowly turned the pages, savoring each postcard size photo. An endless array of photos of shiny, well-dressed, happy, perky people that you’re more likely to see in People magazine, as opposed to a personal album leapt from every single page. But perhaps the most striking aspect of the album was that there were only two photos of *me – her sister, that is. The one who waters her plants, the one she calls when mother or some other matter gets her down, the one who cooks her cherished foods. And looking at those two photos, it was hard to determine whether they were there because they showcased me, or my cat whom she adores immensely. Granted, I am not the most happy-go-lucky person in the world, and she may have thought one too many photos of my melancholic, pensive face might contaminate the mood she was going for in this album.

Sitting there, her house keys on my lap, an all too familiar feeling of loneliness crept up, cutting flesh like a thousand razor blades. How well do we know the people in our lives? How well do we know what others think of us? I mean really think of us. To listen, to share, to reminisce, to consult, and yet to be relegated to mere two photos on the last page of a personal album. The feeling of loneliness swelled inside of me, than shrank, then swelled again. I could hear the pangs of the loneliness so well in this hushed, still house as the hour struck 3pm on the dial.

We pretend to be someone we are not, we pretend to listen, we pretend to care. Why do people have to be this phony? What is the point of it all? People are like deep wells, you don’t really know what is at the bottom. All you can do is imagine what lies there.