Articles

What seems like a lifetime ago, I worked in advertising for a fellow named Tracy. He would occasionally tell the story of how he had won his most prominent client, an established and beloved grocery chain in Utah. While I'm sure he had caressed the story over the years, the underlying lesson was characterologically Tracy.

Not long after moving to Colorado this summer, a stranger from the local religious community began inundating me with countless texts and calls. I was too burdened by the move to respond. My deferrals strengthened this woman's resolve to infringe on my privacy. She left random trinkets and notes on my doorstep. Despite explicit requests to stay off my property, she would knock on my door, hoping to initiate contact.

I’ve struggled my entire life to understand who I am and to know my role here amongst humanity. As a therapist, I often guide people through the process of identity development. I help patients and clients navigate the parts about themselves they like, the parts they dislike and facilitate their identification of characterological elements that transcend various identities they navigate or embrace.

Years ago, at the request of a mutual friend and the consent of all parties involved, I found myself arguing the importance of accepting a person’s stated identity. I needed this mother to accept her son as her daughter. In a quarrel I probably should have been smart enough to avoid, I dug deep into my arsenal of logical and emotional persuasion methods.

I spent my first twelve years on Earth confident my life would end in a sudden flash of light. I was a child of the (late) seventies, and perhaps by then those who had lived through the missile crises of the previous decades had begun to doubt that cataclysmic inevitability.

This morning I read a friend’s social media post declaring that she is working tirelessly to become somebody she’s proud to be. It’s a familiar tale. Too many of us believe that we are not, at this moment, enough.

Maybe it took a global pandemic rendering us isolated and powerless to gain awareness of our loneliness. Why is lonely such a terrifying word? Those kids up to no good: loners. Mass shooters: loners. Those who bother us or are otherwise unworthy of our attention or affection: loners.