Do lonely people know they’re lonely? Do they acknowledge the truth of their existence? When one is lonely, is their loneliness an ever present companion? Does loneliness tag along like a clingy first love, causing one to beg to be alone? Can one accept loneliness, nod heads and shake hands, and drift through life with only occasional reminders that loneliness is there? Can one ignore loneliness entirely, and live in a state of constant confusion regarding the gaping hole inside them?
Lorelai must have had some intrinsic knowledge of her loneliness, but over the years she had taught herself to mask it with convictions of her introverted nature and preference of solitude. On internet quizzes, she clicked that she’d rather spend a weekend at home reading a book than out at nightclubs partying. During icebreakers she always said that when she was fifteen she wrote a novel over summer break; she didn’t say that it was because the circle of friends that she had been a part of during the school year was making plans without her. Lorelai listened to audiobooks by spiritual leaders about self-fulfilment, sought out indie folk musicians with low listening numbers so she could imagine that the artist was speaking to her, and scrolled on Instagram, saving coffee foam designs that she would realistically never try. She also filled journals with entries about people who she had once considered her close friends, but after their inevitable drift she realised the friendship had mattered more to her than it did to them, and what was it about her that made people unable to connect to her – but that is irrelevant, Lorelai assured herself, because she is only seventeen and just hasn’t found her people yet, and not everyone’s youth is like a coming-of-age movie; in fact, no one’s youth is like a coming-of-age movie! Whenever Lorelai felt doubt enter her mind as she tapped through Instagram stories of her smiling peers, drinking and kissing and dancing on tables, she recited to herself that it isn’t real life, her peers are all fighting internal battles, they probably are just better actors than she. Perhaps other people were just better at faking friendships than she.
Lorelai looked to her older sister, Nina, for confirmation of her beliefs. Nina was radiant. She smiled at strangers on the streets. She threw surprise parties for her friends. Nina attracted people to her. To Lorelai, it felt like Nina never had to search for connections. At the beginning of ninth grade, Nina made a core group of friends: Dylan, Billy, Luna, Sage, and Piper. The six of them spent lost weekends at rented cottages, baked weed into brownies which they sold to afford concert tickets, and spread nasty rumours about cheating exes. But Lorelai surmised that Nina’s social life was a façade. For one thing, Nina’s friend group posted all of their adventures on social media, and Lorelai upheld that genuine happiness is only experienced off social media. In fact, she was basically a ghost on her Instagram grid, occasionally posting story photos of book quotes or TV stills or the rare screenshot of a notes app poem that she was particularly proud of, an Instagram presence which she hoped gave the impression of a satisfied introvert. For another thing, Nina had absolutely no direction in life. She planned on taking a gap year to “find herself,” which Lorelai took to mean continue working at Aritzia and spend all the money on alcohol and overpriced club entrance fees. Lorelai was acutely aware that Nina clicked with others easier than she did, but she was also conscious of the fact that she would most likely be accepted into university with a scholarship, get a job researching for a well respected professor, and publish her first novel before fourth year. Lorelai was prepared for real life, and she privately gloried in the fact that Nina had peaked in high school.
This all led to an afternoon in late June, a significant afternoon because Nina and her friends had just graduated high school. Lorelai had cried a bit at the ceremony, claiming it was because she is a generally sentimental person, but really because as she looked at the misty-eyed, hugging graduates, she could envision how hollow she would feel next year, when she was in their place. She pictured herself saying goodbye to Anya, who she had called her best friend in ninth grade, and who she had drifted from after an awkward sleepover where Lorelai just didn’t have any exciting sexual stories to share. She pictured herself saying goodbye to Caroline, who she had spent one glorious summer between tenth and eleventh grade with, watching movies, discussing books, and painting mediocre pictures, and who she drifted from after the two hooked up and Lorelai was too afraid to express that she really wanted a relationship. Her mind played a carousel of images depicting sweet moments of blissful bonding that she had realised in hindsight were one-sided. Lorelai saw that although Nina would miss her friends, she was truly jubilant at her graduation, for Nina had spent four years forging connections, creating untainted memories, and coming into herself. Lorelai wasn’t jealous of Nina’s confidence, because she had confidence too, and confidence in one’s writing abilities and never ending capacity for knowledge was just as significant as confidence in one’s being as a social creature, right?
After the graduation ceremony, Nina, Dylan, Billy, Luna, Sage, and Piper drove in Billy’s car to Lorelai and Nina’s house. Nina had spent the past three nights decorating their backyard until it was the spitting image of a Pinterest backyard glamping excursion. Lorelai scoffed at the amount of effort Nina had put into what was essentially an Instagrammable moment – Nina had hand crafted garlands of dried flowers, purchased enough fairy lights to set a modest mansion on fire, pinned four years worth of photos onto at least five feet of cork boards, screen printed nicknames onto the bottoms of six sweatpants, iced dozens of cookies, and even home baked a three tier graduation cake. It was all so excessive, and Lorelai couldn’t help but wonder where Nina would be if she spent a fraction of that time on university applications or creating a five year plan for herself. While Nina’s group pulled into the driveway, Lorelai situated herself at her desk, planning to spend the night writing poems to potentially include in her debut poetry collection. She opened her bedroom window, located above her desk, to let fresh air in. Her bedroom faced the backyard, so the open window lent her an earful of Dylan, Billy, Luna, Sage, and Piper’s heartfelt praise of Nina’s setup. Lorelai stuck her earbuds in. She considered Nina’s friends’ joy mawkish, and she wouldn’t let it irritate her out of writing.
Hours had passed, and the sun had set. Lorelai had occasionally looked up from her computer screen, and caught glimpses of Nina’s group taking cuddly polaroids, dancing to tracks from their childhood, and lying down to watch the sunset. As the night wore on, Lorelai had noticed her own poems getting more and more wistful. She wrote poems about the friend group she had spent five wonderful months with this past year, and imagined that group celebrating the end of eleventh grade without her now. She stopped herself from checking the Instagram of Robin, who had been her closest friend in that group before her belonging with them fizzled, to see what the friend group was up to. She didn’t stop herself from scrolling on Caroline’s Instagram page, imagining her and Caroline replacing Nina’s group next year, but it was hard to thoroughly imagine that when many of Caroline’s Instagram photos depicted Caroline and her girlfriend, Daisy. Daisy, who had been part of the friend group Lorelai had hung out with last summer. Daisy, who had also distanced herself from Lorelai and when she and Caroline had drifted, without explanation. Lorelai was losing herself to dreams, she scolded herself, and pulled her earbuds out in order to be grounded back to reality by listening to Nina’s friend group outside her window.
“My favourite show,” Billy said, “was the time they did a Hole cover night. It was hilarious to see Piper attempt grunge.”
Piper covered her face and laughed, while Sage interjected,
“It was actually a good attempt! Cut her some slack, she’s literally an indie folk musician in an indie folk band. My favourite shows are the ones where you play your own original songs, you’re the best at that.”
“So what you’re saying is I suck at grunge, no, I get it!” Piper responded through her laughter
The friends were recounting memories around a campfire, which is something Lorelai thought only happened in movies; in fact, she thought, that’s probably why they were doing it, in order to deliberately replicate coming-of-age movies.
Now Nina was talking about how much she was going to miss Piper next year, when Piper left for New York to pursue a career in music.
Piper smiled sweetly. “This is going to sound cheesy, but let me be cheesy for a second. I genuinely would not have been able to see music as a career possibility if it wasn’t for you guys. Remember my first shows, when I had no idea how to advertise, I had no idea how to set my shows apart from other high school bands. You guys helped me and I’ll never forget it. Billy and Luna, I can’t thank you enough for the band logo, and all the poster designs and website design you made for us. Sage, you always reached out to venues or other bands when I was too afraid to. Dylan, you spent hours of your time filming and editing music videos for us, which you never had to do. And Nina, I mean, you wrote song lyrics with me, you never missed a show. If I ever reach any kind of commercial success, if I ever win any kind of industry award, you will be the first people I thank.”
Lorelai had listened to Piper’s music briefly, of course, as she made it a mission to acquaint herself with as many indie folk musicians with under 100,000 monthly listeners as she could. She had specifically been surprised by the quality of Piper’s lyrics, appreciated the metaphors in them, and she remembered specifically appreciating the words of one song, home alone, a song about feeling like a black sheep among family members. Lorelai remembered assuming that must be a note that Nina and Piper did not relate on. Now she recalled Piper’s lyrics with curiosity, surely Nina couldn’t write that well – writing was Lorelai’s thing, writing is what Lorelai was good at, while Nina was good at having friends, that was clear to everyone, right?
“I still don’t think Billy should have passed his driving test,” Sage stated. “Remember on our way to Gravenhurst last July, when he almost ran over that poor deer?”
Now it was Billy’s turn to cover his face. “It came out of nowhere, I checked all my blind spots, I swear!”
“And besides, we wouldn’t have even been able to stay at a cottage that week if I didn’t drive, since you all took forever to get your own licences. I mean, Dylan still doesn’t have one!”
“How about we don’t talk about my lack of driving abilities right now?” Dylan retorted. “Luna had the time of her life at the cottage, remember her three day affair with that college girl who worked at the grocery store?”
Luna blushed and remarked, “I would have moved to Gravenhurst for Willow if only she had asked! Romeo and Juliet got married in three days, moving to a small town for the most beautiful girl in Canada is nothing compared to that!”
To this, Nina snorted, which caused Luna to turn to her and accuse,
“Don’t mock me, Nina! I remember your crush on Claude, you spent an hour on hair and makeup every morning just to impress him, and he never even gave you a kiss!”
“That was, like, the one time Nina has ever been rejected,” Sage observed. “Really shattered her ego.”
In her room, Lorelai was taken aback. Nina dated men with such confidence and luster that Lorelai assumed her sister never even had to do the pursuing. Outside, Nina was explaining to her friends that Claude had talked to her as an equal, listened to her opinions on books and music, and took her interest in art history seriously.
“How come the only guys who like me are selfish, egotistical, and boring?” Nina lamented. “And the one time I met an actual interesting guy he wasn’t interested?”
Typically, Lorelai would have made an internal quip about how Nina is selfish, egotistical, and boring, and similar people attract similar people. Presently, she was mulling over the information that her sister took art history seriously. Lorelai knew that Nina decorated her walls with art prints, albeit often from world famous painters, so she always assumed Nina just thought the paintings were pretty, or Nina just wanted to appear cultured. Now, Lorelai recalled Nina’s heartbreak when she was rejected from a summer program at an international art gallery. Lorelai remembered coming home from work and seeing Nina on the couch, watching long documentaries about hyper specific movements in art. She had never registered these occurrences as significant of any greater interest in the history of art – in fact, she always passed them off as what Nina watched to keep up with her friends’ conversations. Of course friends don’t have animated conversations about niche art history documentaries. Of course Lorelai was wrong about what friends talked about or bonded over.
As Lorelai listened to Nina’s friends recount stories of throwing up at parties, joining the school play, and sneaking coolers into movie theatres, her self pity grew larger and larger until she couldn’t ignore the feeling anymore. She shut her window, closed her laptop, and lay down on her bed. She had fought off this lonely feeling for years, and finally, on this seemingly inconsequential June night, she allowed herself to wallow in it. Had Lorelai ever experienced true friendship? Judging by Nina and Nina’s group of friends, she never had, because she had never felt so unassuming and free to express her vulnerabilities and gratitude as the group outside clearly felt. What was so hideous about Lorelai that nobody wanted to stay with her? Why couldn’t she just be wittier, prettier? What if she had made up a story to tell Anya that night in ninth grade? Better yet, what if she had just sucked it up and done something, anything, sexual before the age of sixteen? Did Lorelai hold more inhibitions than every other teenager? Was there something biologically wrong with her? Perhaps she contained a chemical that is toxic to all other humans, causing her to repel connections. Tonight, that notion seemed as possible a theory as any. Lorelai tried to soothe herself by imagining her future, imagining fans purchasing tickets to her book tours and gazing at her with wondrous eyes while she told inspiring stories about being a teenage outcast and finding her home in writing. A thought interrupted her dreaming, a horrifying thought, a thought that rang true even to self-deluding Lorelai: if no one had ever wanted to listen to her, if no one had ever liked her, if no one had ever valued her, why would that suddenly change once she published a book? Why would anyone want to read her stories, why would anyone care about them? Lorelai felt her lifeline crumbling before her eyes, but she couldn’t give up, she had to make something of herself, she had to make all of the Friday nights spent sipping peppermint tea and submitting to short story contests mean something. If Lorelai needed to leave an impression on people in order to be successful, then she needed to make friends, yet again; but this time had to be different, this time she had to complete the impossible task of maintaining a friendship. Lorelai attempted to summon the willpower and ambition that she was so proud of possessing. She could make connections before the end of high school, if she really put her mind to it, but where to start? She entertained the idea of texting Robin, or Caroline, or Anya, or anyone that she had once considered a connection, but ultimately thought better of it They had left Lorelai, not the other way around, and Lorelai could envision the overly-polite, apologetic, refusal that would no doubt be returned to any request she sent to reconnect. The rush of adrenaline that had been brought on when she saw her career at risk quickly burned out. In the still air of her bedroom, Lorelai admitted to herself the truth of her condition. Lorelai may have been fooling herself with assertions of contentedness and maturity, but she was no fool; she understood that some people were just made to be alone. Humans are scientifically social creatures, and Lorelai finally recognized her role as the exception that proves the rule.