“There is in certain living souls a quality of loneliness unspeakable, so great it must be shared as company is shared by lesser beings. Such a loneliness is mine; so know by this that in immensity there is one lonelier than you.”

 

My heart is hurting tonight for a loved one (actually, for more than one) whose heart is broken…

 

She’s 95 years old. She poured 95% or better of her life into being what her family expected of mothers and wives and workers and, at the end of hers, she feels unseen, unknown and woefully under-appreciated.

 

In her rare, spare time on earth, she poured as much of herself into her own pursuits and loves as she could, but it was sporadic because other people’s needs and expectations (as they are with so many moms and wives) swallowed up the rest of it.

 

Today her eldest daughter, Penny, delivered through my kitty door (because I wasn’t at home) a card and letter from her thanking me for being her friend, for listening to her and caring about her, for truly seeing her and wanting to know her story and her heart.

 

I cried as I read it. And as I called her today to let her know I will treasure her words and her friendship for as long as I live, I cried again. She confessed that she cried when she wrote it, too.

 

She says she doesn’t know how much longer she’ll live–she has lost her will to live–and she wanted to say what she hasn’t said in words to her closest, dearest friends while she still can. She wanted to share what’s in her heart for us, as broken as it is.

 

She was my baseball coach in Spanaway when I was a kid and I was friends (am friends) with her two daughters and one son. We reconnected several years after I returned from California in 2004 because I always had such fond memories of our times together.

 

This wonderful lady “got” me. I was unspoken and unannounced as transgender (a term I didn’t even hear until about 2005) but when I finally discovered it, I knew that’s what I’ve been my whole life.

 

When I told her, she didn’t even blink. It’s one of the things she loves about me. She sensed that I wasn’t going to “go along to get along” and that I was going to live my life by my own lights, not by other people’s opinion of how I should conduct it. (Possibly she wishes she had done the same with hers, but times were so different a hundred years ago! She could have been institutionalized for being an odd duck back then!)

 

Her youngest daughter Judi also said, when I told her I was transgender, that she always knew there was something different about me but that, until I identified it in my book Womb Man, she couldn’t quite put her finger on it–and suddenly, there it was. Bingo! I was a guy! It all made sense to her. The mystery was solved. I’m not different. I’ve never been different. I’ve just always been a guy (with tits, but not for a whole lot longer!!!).

 

Mary Jane and Judi, sadly, are like oil and water. They don’t mix.  So, both of them are in separate saucers of loneliness, loving each other but unable to breach what makes them so different.

 

They’ve hurt each other’s feelings and both are miserable. Neither knows what to do to bridge the gap enough to be able to reach across a table to each other, hold hands, and say, “I love you.” They’re too hurt, angry/afraid and sensitive to risk it.

 

One wants to force it out into the open, confront and settle it once and for all; the other is a nervous wreck because of it.

 

It all sounds so familiar to me.  At the end of Carolyn Kelley’s life, she and I were like oil and water. We had to call it quits and separate. We still loved each other. We just couldn’t abide in the same room without causing anxiety to each other.  So… I get it. It’s far better to love someone from afar when you know you’re better off steering clear of them.

 

But here’s the thing. Every single person I know well is pretty much in the same boat. I’ve listened to their stories, and their pain, and their challenges with various individuals and, in every instance, it all boils down to the same thing: what Theodore Sturgeon wrote above.

 

Each of us exists in a self-contained universe. We seek connection with those we love (or believe we should love) but we never really attain it, because we’re trapped inside our stories and our insecurities.

 

My best friend was adopted as an infant. Both of the people who raised her (her adoptive parents) have passed away. She wants to find her birth parents, but fears doing so. And there it is again. She’s in a saucer of loneliness, seeking a connection that has the potential to go either way, and she doesn’t feel strong enough to risk it if it goes the way she fears it might. (What if they don’t want to be found? What if they’re married to people who don’t know they had a child? Will I be opening a can of worms? What if….???)

 

I grew up in a family that stayed together despite many challenges. I know who my birth parents are and who my sisters are. And yet, here I am, in a saucer of loneliness, seeking connection because I don’t feel close to my nuclear family; we’re too different, and separate, and cautious. We don’t trust each other enough. That’s the bottom line. There’s been too much water under the bridge, too much dysfunctional history with each other to convince us that we’re 100% safe with each other.  (Both of my sisters are having a hard time dealing with the fact that I’m openly transgender. It was okay when I was quiet about it. Now, not so much. They think it somehow reflects badly on our family. I’ll always be their “sister” even when my breasts are gone. Even though they know it isn’t true, “sister” is familiar.)

 

I have a niece who’s at odds with her sister. They’re like oil and water.  They love each other but don’t “get” each other. There’s too much history there.

 

I know another wonderful woman who doesn’t know just how wonderful she is because her dad was distant and she married a man who’s distant.  She grew up afraid and uncertain of her lovableness. She presents herself as an embodied apology, afraid to be who she really is. I love her fiercely but I want to shake her and say, “Be yourself and find out who will love you for that alone–not just for you’re availability to their every whim!”  (I know I will. If she ever said “No” to somebody, I’d congratulate her … right after retrieving my jaw from the floor!!!)

 

Another female acquaintance says “Sorry!” about every third sentence.  Her entire life is an apology. She doesn’t have enough personal insight to realize how debilitating being sorry for every possible perceived slight is to her self-esteem.

 

I see it everywhere I go.  I don’t think there’s a person I’m close enough to where I don’t see the scars that have been etched into their hearts, minds and souls.

 

This is why I do my best to listen.  I want my loved ones and acquaintances to know they’re not tragically deficient, and that somebody truly cares. But that “someone” (me) is also a victim of the same thing–an inability to trust more than a few people with my true essence.  I can put it down on paper (as I’m doing now), but in person, I’m every bit as much a saucer of loneliness as you are.

 

This is why it’s so important to be KIND. Everybody is facing some kind of challenge that you know nothing about. Simply letting them know you care and that you don’t judge or condemn them means the world to them.

 

You don’t need to “fix” anyone. You just need to love them where they are, listen, and do your best to understand what they’re going through.

 

No one wants to get to the end of their life feeling unknown and under-appreciated. Heck, not one wants to get to the end of this week, or this day, feeling that way.

 

What can you do today to help someone feel less isolated in their saucer of loneliness?