30 Days (XXVIII)

A Picture of Your Greatest Fear

I wrote this years ago on this blog. It’s been years since I’ve even seen Donnie Darko, and that becomes relevant in a moment. While much of the “consequential” belief systems in this fear have changed and evolved over the years—for example, I don’t believe in “The One”—the core fear (romantic loneliness) remains coherent. My framework for addressing this fear has changed much since then, whether for better or ill, but the heart of this explains what I’m most afraid of:

Do you know what I’m afraid of? I’m so afraid. I never thought I would say this to you: I am afraid of being alone. This fear haunts me, eats me, and consumes me, day in and day out, judging and liquidating my every move. I fear, so badly, never having anyone. I fear growing old, cold, and alone, never tasting love, and dying alone and forgotten in a decrepit hospice, those whitewashed tombs. I am so afraid I will never taste the kiss of a girl or feel the warmth of her body close; I am so afraid I will never be the focus of sparkling eyes and a tender touch and shy smiles. I fear never being loved, only watching others parade in fashion, hungering and thirsting and crying in my own silence. I can’t rationalize my fear away; you can’t rationalize the fear of snakes or spiders, and my life’s history gives no alternate meaning: “No one wants you, and all who might want you will be taken from you.” I am left alone, unwanted, watching my friends and their girls, watching the object of my passion for so long taken by a best friend—and he forgets me [an event in High School that foreshadows, ironically, what would happen my sophomore year of college]. For so long I’ve lain alone at home in bed as my friends went out with all those who shared affection. 

I don’t want sex or making out. I want someone to talk with, someone to hold close, a girl who doesn’t shiver at my sight but draws near, finding comfort and refuge in my arms. When she cries, I want to hold her. When I cry, I want her to hold me. I am a romantic shunned, looking around and seeing sex-mongers cheating the romance out of girls, leaving them hollow, sluttish shells—the rape of all good and true. I want a girl so badly, a genuine and authentic, loving and cherished, a beautiful and captivating girl to find a hiding place in my love, to cry no more. I want to go to candlelit dinners, to hold her by a fire, to feed off her warmth under the stars, to whisper in her ear, “I love you. It will be okay.”

Did you ever see the movie Donnie Darko? Donnie falls in love with Gretchen, and she is killed—run over by a car. It is very tragic. This haunts me, sears me, paralyzes me. It comes up in my dreams and nightmares. I am Donnie—weird, socially blundering, wanting the girl. Gretchen is the one whom I seek; I am the one who’s filled her dreams of weddings and engagements and honeymoons. Then she is taken, brutally and savagely, innocent and angelic, battered and bloodied. This I fear, too: discovering the One—and she is taken from me. I fear she shall be taken from me.