When the heat goes off in my apartment, as it regularly does these days, I know it even in my sleep. Coming out of a dream, I burrow deeper under my quilt. I let the sheet cover my ears and hug my knees to my chest. I do it without thinking, without ever opening my eyes. I entreat the dream to continue, though it often ends like an interrupted sentence.

Lately the ball of self-doubt in my chest has swollen uncomfortably. I can scarcely breathe sometimes. On my break at work, I seek out the empty table in the farthest corner. I stare into my yogurt cup, sip my off-brand cafeteria cola and mentally list the things that are troubling me. The list is more than a habit. It is a ritual, a way of climbing to the top of the pain and looking down at it all. I’m the king of the castle, you see. Recently, a co-worker teased me about it - the eating alone, not the list-making. I didn’t know what to say, so I tried to laugh. The laugh came out all hollow and false. 

I learned early on that there are words for people like me, and none of them kind: loner, recluse, introvert, misanthrope. They are words that mean a person who keeps herself to herself. If I could have in that moment, I would have pulled my legs up onto the cafeteria chair and hugged my knees to my chest. I would have shut my eyes and let my hair fall over my face. Isn’t it exhausting to refuse your first impulse every time? Simply exhausting to be a person who brushes her teeth and talks about the weather and says “Good morning!” convincingly. 

What loners understand and non-loners never will, is that neither of us wants to be alone, but one of us has to be in order to survive. In twelfth grade I discovered I could sleep off the stress. It was a discovery that destroyed a lot of things for me that year - my perfect grades, my relationships, my fifteen year commitment to dance classes - but I still wonder with some frequency whether it may have saved my life. Looking back, I remember very little of that year, but I remember the way it felt to come home from school and climb into bed with all my clothes on. I remember pulling down the shades at 3 o’clock in the afternoon.

There is a line from the song “Why Does It Always Rain On Me?” by the band Travis that goes “I’m seeing a tunnel at the end of all these lights.” It is the line that springs to mind whenever someone says “What have you got to be sad about? Look at how many wonderful things you have in your life!” It’s true. I have no right to this unhappiness, no claim to that lonely table. But there are those of us who see tunnels or seek them out as a matter of course. We are used to keeping ourselves in the dark, in every sense of the phrase. So let me shed some light. Let me tell you the truth: it is dangerous when your sadness becomes your safe place.

I have only just begun to understand what this means for me. It means that my worries, my anxiety, and the wild plunges of my self-esteem are beginning to show their claws. I am jealous - jealous of strangers, and worse, of friends. It is a jealousy that paralyzes, that chokes compliments in my mouth. I am often bitter. My words come out too sharp or not at all. I can no longer distinguish my selfishness from my self-preservation. Isn’t she a strange bird? The loner who longs to be the center of attention. But perhaps it is natural to run from what we want most. I cut myself off from my cravings rather than swallow myself whole. 

For now, I burrow deeper. I turn off my phone. I entreat the dream to continue.