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I stayed in Camelot in few nights back. Not the Camelot of legend, but a house that my high school friend Emma rented with her four best college friends. Over the year they've had a murder mystery dinner, and Disney Princess movie marathons, and hours upon hours fencing literary references across cups of tea and endless games of Settlers of Catan.
I spent most of my solitary year in Minnesota viewing Camelot as a shining beacon of togetherness and doing my very very best not to envy Emma for it.
So when, near the end of last week's Arthurian sojourn, one of Emma's college friends commented (apropos of Emma), “She was lonely earlier this year” - I nearly fell off the couch.
“But she had the four of you!" I cried, incredulously. "She was living with the four of you!” (In a house that I had hitherto looked on through the golden, glowing haze appropriate to a promised land!)
“Well, yeah,” he said. “But she didn’t have a lot of friends outside of Camelot - close enough to hang out with, I mean.”
Because if you left out that desideratum, I'm pretty sure that in counting Emma's friends, you would run out of fingers and toes.
How many friends do we need so as not to feel lonely?
Like Emma, I’ve spent a lot of time being lonely with no real reason for it. One half of my journal from fifth and sixth grade consists of complaints that I was so lonely and didn't have a best friend; the other half is all hijinks and thoughtful chats with my friends. (It’s pretty clear, in fact, that one girl thought we were best friends, but I didn’t notice because she wasn’t terribly bright and therefore I found her confidences tiresome. *headdesk*)
And I continued to feel lonely in high school, and also in college, but I always figured this was just me: my peculiar genius for loneliness at work.
But it seems lately that loneliness is more common than that, which is in one sense rather cheering – we’re all lonely together! And therefore not alone! – but also incredibly sad. I loved the halcyon glow of Camelot. I don’t want that to be just an illusion.
I spent most of my solitary year in Minnesota viewing Camelot as a shining beacon of togetherness and doing my very very best not to envy Emma for it.
So when, near the end of last week's Arthurian sojourn, one of Emma's college friends commented (apropos of Emma), “She was lonely earlier this year” - I nearly fell off the couch.
“But she had the four of you!" I cried, incredulously. "She was living with the four of you!” (In a house that I had hitherto looked on through the golden, glowing haze appropriate to a promised land!)
“Well, yeah,” he said. “But she didn’t have a lot of friends outside of Camelot - close enough to hang out with, I mean.”
Because if you left out that desideratum, I'm pretty sure that in counting Emma's friends, you would run out of fingers and toes.
How many friends do we need so as not to feel lonely?
Like Emma, I’ve spent a lot of time being lonely with no real reason for it. One half of my journal from fifth and sixth grade consists of complaints that I was so lonely and didn't have a best friend; the other half is all hijinks and thoughtful chats with my friends. (It’s pretty clear, in fact, that one girl thought we were best friends, but I didn’t notice because she wasn’t terribly bright and therefore I found her confidences tiresome. *headdesk*)
And I continued to feel lonely in high school, and also in college, but I always figured this was just me: my peculiar genius for loneliness at work.
But it seems lately that loneliness is more common than that, which is in one sense rather cheering – we’re all lonely together! And therefore not alone! – but also incredibly sad. I loved the halcyon glow of Camelot. I don’t want that to be just an illusion.
