issue six: on loneliness and new york movie
the loneliness never left me, i always took it with me
Edward Hopper’s New York Movie is a painting of a poem. “This is not a love story,” wrote Jeannette Winterson, “but love is in it. That is, love is just outside it, looking for a way to break in.” A woman stands in the hall, her despair evident, communication nonexistent despite the luxury that surrounds her. The critical piece of any work of art is the interpretation of the viewer, and here is the story I invent in Hopper’s painting: the woman is in love with a man sitting in the theatre, perhaps even the one whose profile we catch most clearly in the painting. She knows he cares about her in turn, and wants nothing more than to walk in and confess what she feels; not just once but each anxiety, each doubt, each sorrow. Fear traps her in her loneliness, and he sits oblivious without her. In short, love waits, hand in hand with the twin virtue of honesty, looking for a way to break in.
More than a lack of love, fear holds us back. We bite our tongues and deal with the discomforts those around us cause us rather than engage in open communication. The risk of losing someone we love as a result of confrontation outweighs the potential for our relationships to be improved by mutual understanding. I have found that I can articulate my concerns to myself, to my diary, to other friends—but when I must be direct, my voice gives out. I mean this in a literal sense; my usual measured vocal modulation (a concentrated attempt to correct the natural patterns of my speech) drops away when I have to be honest. I get flustered, I can’t look the person in the eye, I stutter and stammer, I take long pauses between phrases. My tone goes dead, more like a robot than a woman hoping she’s wanted.
One of my closest friends, a confidant who’s had to hear about most of my fears save the ones that pertain to him, told me that I conflate having needs with being needy. It’s true that I resent the thought of coming on too strong—sensitive, clingy, and anxious. While these are adjectives I would use to describe myself, I don’t find them admirable traits, and labour under the delusion that I can keep these tendencies trapped within me rather than expose them in action and inaction alike. For better or worse, we wear our hearts on our sleeves, but what we need from others must be verbalized for them to understand. I want things (a vague, filler word I would cut from another piece, but here I suppose the ambiguity underscores the multitude of my wants) so much it threatens to tear me apart; I want nothing enough to risk losing what I have.
“I realized that we all think we might be terrible people,” wrote Miranda July. “But we only reveal this before asking someone to love us. It is a kind of undressing.” One of the most critical scenes in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment adheres to this statement. Raskolnikov, the protagonist of the novel, confesses to his crime before the woman he is in love with, Sonya. The extenuating circumstances of his omnipresent guilt outweigh the typical human fear of losing what we have. However, it seems both counterproductive and untenable to murder two elderly women with an axe whenever we need to feel understood. The takeaway of greater importance is the degree of trust Raskolnikov places in Sonya when he admits his guilt to her; namely, that she won’t turn him in, that going to her is his sole opportunity to be forgiven. Perhaps seeing her retain her love for him despite his crime is the only way he can forgive himself.
Her response is to cry out, begging him to consider what he has done to his soul. Sonya’s reaction is visceral, and selfish, and more human than almost anything I can imagine. Someone sits down in front of you and tells you the most horrible thing they’ve done, and you don’t consider their impact on others. You don’t hate them. You just want them to be better for their own sake. What a miracle to trust in the endless human capacity for forgiveness, but refuse to extend it inwards. There is one person irredeemable to you: yourself. Your dearest friend does not factor into the equation; you would forgive her anything. Fear is a trickster god telling you that you don’t deserve the same understanding.
We’re scared to reach for other people because we expect them to pull back, yet we receive those we love with open arms despite their sins. We’re afraid of losing what we have, so we create self-fulfilling prophecies about being left behind because of our eagerness to be loved. What are we losing by staying locked within ourselves? “No one can be independent of other people completely,” wrote Sally Rooney, “so why not give up the attempt, she thought, go running in the other direction, depend on people for everything, allow them to depend on you, why not.” What do we have to lose through the act of vulnerability—is it better to be unknown and loved (a surface affection if there were ever one) or left because we are known? The kind of love we want is the kind that requires us to accept the risk of its loss.
We are not alone—it’s time to accept that.