Lonely?, Upgrade to the New SOS
The fear of dying alone never frightened me. It never occurred to me, that I would need or desire a companion at old age. However, the phenomenon of lonerism has become widespread with each passing pandemic. In my early teens, the universal community created online served me well. During my formative years, I would send texts and emails to my friends; now, I send posts to strangers and acquaintances. The dynamics are constantly evolving.
Time has morphed community into the image of influencers, shifting how communication and sociality are conducted. Our guides for these spaces are once again ruled by the elite, leaving many of the stories from our friends in constant rivalry with the latest trend. At 15 years old, I downloaded Instagram; I began sharing my life one photo and several filters at a time. I remember the first time I shielded myself from questions I was not strong enough to answer in my comment section about my identity and persona. I took each post thereafter seriously, reveling in my inner artist. My life became my story, and as I aged, I began rewriting the script for who I would become. On August 5, 2023, I wrote myself in Paris, France, 7,945 km from my hometown.
On any given day, whether you are walking to the City Centre of Paris or making your way below ground to the metro station, you are bound to greet a myriad of people who speak French, Arabic, Spanish, German, Italian, English, American-English, Mandarin, Japanese — or a combination of the aforementioned. For each nationality, there is a dedicated Quartier, restaurant, or piece of Paris. As you navigate the city, the stimulation and excitement from foreign eyes awing at the art and architecture will consume you. Though the movement is collective, each experience is individualistic and usually relegated to tour groups, family conversations, and selfies. The Institut National de la Statique estimates the population of Paris to be 2.2 million. The occupants live within a 105.4km land mass, about the size of Disneyworld in Orlando, Florida — 101 km. The congested city experiences the most tourists of any city in the entire world. According to The Brussels Times, 44 million people visited Paris, France, in 2022. Everyone is present within their Paris fantasy, creating from the scrappage and rubble, images of their fantasy. Life is no longer Keeping up with the Joneses, the Kardashians have sold the world a new dream of exclusivity.
The brain is responsible for categorizing and initiating physiological responses in heightened stress-inducing environments. The area of the brain responsible for this analysis is the thalamus. The thalamus will interpret the data transmitting the information to either the amygdala or the hippocampus, thus eliciting the proper survival response. Psychologists have linked panic attacks (Panic Disorder) to the locus cerulus area of the brain.
I have retained my rather calm and docile nature from early childhood. I can attribute this peculiarity to my younger brother. My responses to our brotherly fallingouts were very influential in the shaping of my personality. My brother is three years younger than I. It was through him that I became a composed, laissez-faire, come-what-may individual. His presence exacerbated these already present attributes in my character. Through him, I was able to stave off my worries by focusing on the greater goal of peace and harmony. However, earlier this week, I caught myself clenching my chest at the back of the metro, after an early morning of crowding into the station car. I remember the loss of breath I experienced, the vivid colors taking the form from jackets, inaudible conversations, side smiles, and music that hit me harder than the abrupt and sporadic stops on the train. I could not process what was happening to me all at once. All my life, I was the calm one ready to take on the world. But here I was, hunched over, in disarray, losing composure.
Overstimulation suffocates you like darkness in a silent room. It is the faces, images, and language you haven’t the time to sit with and conceptualize.
I learned relatively late in life — more recently than anything — possibly as recent as last month, that I must digest the singular moment in front of me to be available for anything around me. Paris does not operate in this way; for this reason, I tend to gravitate toward the people who feel like my home. Terrosa Rd, Grand Prairie, Texas, equipped me with everything I would need for a simple mind. “Worry if the wheatgrass browns,” mow the lawn once a week, borrow your neighbor’s lawmnman; have kids, two, die. It was the religion I worshipped, the walls I kept white in my room, and the smiles that stretched wider than picket fences that shielded the neighborhood pool. To this day, I can watch the patterns on stucco walls for hours.
“Interpersonal Intimacy” as defined by clinician and author, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, is the universal innate human desire for intimacy. This desire has been studied and lectured by Anna Freud, author of “Losing and Being Lost.” Freud collected data on adolescents’ dependency on emotionality, tender closeness, and intimacy. If a child’s emotional needs are not met by their caretaker, this lack will detrimentally impact relationships with peers and future sexual partners. Many children who do not have a subsequent healthy intimate relationship are susceptible to seeking it out in their imagination. This predicament can inhibit their ability to differentiate a “realistic phenomena” from “the products of his[her] lively fantasy”. The introduction of fantasy figures of emotion takes the place of real human connection in children. This substitution is exacerbated by the celebrated fantasies inundated within social media platforms for its participants to like and share.
Social media co-creates reality with marketable ideas about actuality that further exacerbate and distort the human desire for intimacy.
I haven’t had the opportunity to be lonely. It has been almost a year since I have experienced the sweet solemn melancholy. It is almost hard for me to comprehend, but I can remember, from reflection, time stamps, and voice inflections, that my voice still prefers solitude. Socializing is as essential to my preservation and survival during my travels as my positive attitude; none of which come naturally. I can walk the streets for nights on end, sleep on benches alone and speak to no one, but the truth is I actually cannot. I would die much quicker in my misery than in the livelihoods of potential friends that I must pursue for preservation.
I began traveling the United States at the beginning on a $300/month budget. Food and shelter quickly became co-dependent on the people I would meet along my journey. My resourcefulness transformed my introversion into inclusion. I built interpersonal relationships with strangers who would later help and house me.
A human’s propensity for adaptability is made possible through a series of actions both intentional and unconscious. Patterns formed over time create relegatory behavior markers within the brain that signal seemingly automatic responses. The study of human behavioral responses to their environment is called ecological anthropology. The symbiotic relationship dynamic is formed through empirical experience. The interpretation of the stimuli is filtered through several processes to determine the most appropriate course of action (Moran, People in Ecosystems, Human Adaptability). Humans have relied on this adaptability trait throughout history for survival in changing climates and ecosystems. The ability to adapt is evolutionary and affects the mental capability far exceeding their current status, but also altering their genome. Although this controversial study has been widely debated, the neurological study of mental manipulation and gene alteration, in theory, can be utilized for the benefit of humanity in the tides of social change. I am constantly recreating myself and refining the vision I have for my public persona. Dismantling who I thought I was to survive has kept me alive. I do not live for myself, I am living for and through the individuals I meet daily. They are my home, my nurturers, and my friends. It does not appeal to social media notoriety, it is neither glamorous nor aspiratory. It is a shield I have crafted for my survival. Its armor is thicker than my skull and kinder than my most tender moments.
The Effect of Social Media on Sociality
Sarah Myers West, a contributor to “The Social Media Debate,” sheds insight on the role institutions play in choreographing modern-day relationships. Information and updates are transmitted in real-time; social media companies have likened news with the opinions of commentators, shifting the dynamic of current events to be embedded within the platform of social conversation. The politicization of everyday activities is posted as stories alongside friends and acquaintances for your viewing convenience. The brain processes the data, sifting through fact and fiction, entertainment, info, friends, and influencers. But how does this affect one's humanity?
Humanity, as a collective of beings, is neither predisposed to good nor bad, but life as an objective reality is shaped within the context of social norms. Social media may be an equalizer to humanity’s greatest disparities. My humanity, within the context of social media, is dictated partly, if not exclusively by what is trending. Ideological relegations should and have been enacted, but to what extent is a person’s humanity their responsibility? I turned off the information I interpreted when arriving in Paris, and through disseminating and creating rather than consuming, I was able to distance myself from the ongoing conversation within my familiar social circle. The all too familiar names that appeared on my screen, the people I was posting for, changed shapes once again. My sights were not set on my hometown friends, while in Paris, I would force myself to set sights on the people I would meet in the new and bustling city.
My tenure in Paris has been wreathed with new connections formed through mutual friends, from organic and transfigured meetings. Meeting a human a day has given me the prospect of not being homeless. I have slept in a new bed, every other night, for 60 days. My sleep pattern is modeled after my hosts. I am social on Wednesdays, introverted on most Fridays, I visit markets in the streets of the 10th arrondissement on Sundays; repeating the process several times over with new faces and new names. My nature has been shifted in this process to unrecognizable means. I can still hear my small voice, but I also hear ShamaDennisMatthieuQuentinFelixFZMichelleMichaelTommySamNicolas. I do a relatively sanitary job of distancing myself from my past iterations, actually, they may, in fact, influence the latter’s propensity for availability. Who I was on Terrosa Rd, Grand Prairie, Texas, still exists, but it is also disillusioned by the walls I held to my nose for so long.
I held my chest when I was on the subway last week. I fought the onset of tears with loud thoughts of emptiness and black walls. “Hold it together a moment longer, a second longer. Just breathe.” I closed my eyes, releasing the stimulation I witnessed daily but could not grasp on this day. I could not handle being alone in a city with so much noise and movement. I lose myself to moments, to people, and emotions, but I delcared I would retain composure until I finished the finale of my countdown.
Finally, the subway doors open for me and I step onto the platform to greet a stranger. Big smiles. Moti Benita, author of “Freedom to Feel: A Self Determination Theory,” describes the role emotionality plays in the conceptualization of new experiences. Acknowledging the experience through my current conscientious state will aid in my overall sense of self. The ability to identify and differentiate the voices prevalent in the narratives we are exposed to both digitally and non-digitally gives weight to our individuality. The plasticity of these experiences constantly alters with shifts in perspective. My ineptness in moments of intense social stimulation has not inhibited my propensity for participating in them. I have conditioned myself to practice taking in breaths, breaking each moment into smaller digestible pieces with each inhale.
I had a job interview on Monday, October 2, 2023. It went well; I may have work by the time of this article’s publication date — which will help me secure an apartment of my own. Although I am happy to embrace the fantasy of living alone, not depending on another for a place to sleep; I cannot help but wonder if my connectedness to the city and the people I call friends, will be closed off behind apartment walls too thick to see through?
