I can’t make up my mind about whether unhappiness is a fundamentally lonely or social experience. On the one hand, it’s the most collective of all human emotions, the one true commonality. No matter who we are, how we grew up, or where we live on the planet, we’re all susceptible to the same fears, desires, and wants — translation: we’re all pretty tight with misery and suffering.
On the other hand, we all seem to concoct our own unique brew of unhappiness, everyone wallowing in the isolation of his or her own special woe. His divorce is the world’s worst divorce to ever take place, her miscarriage is the single most devastating, unlike any other she can imagine. To a certain extent, it’s true — the divorce is in fact the worst ever for him, for the simple reason that it’s his divorce. Same with her miscarriage, her mother’s death, his cancer.
So the way I see it, the pain of a breakup — that raw, dark loneliness and despair that makes you feel like nothing on earth could ever be right and good again — must be shared by everyone who’s ever been in love with someone else — which is just about everyone (excepting a decent portion of the financial district). It’s OK to take a little solace knowing that millions of people before me have stared at the ceiling until 4 AM, wandered the sidewalks in a daze, eaten next to nothing for two days and then compensated with an entire red velvet cake. There’s just no way that I’m the only heartbreak casualty alive who’s ever spent a Friday night on a floor model at Crate & Barrel crying into her palms. (”Do you think they didn’t have the color she wanted?” a would-be sympathizer asks his Prada-clad wife. She grabs his hand and marches away as quickly as possible.)
No matter how lonely it feels, scores of people have felt this way before me, and plenty more will after. It doesn’t change anything, really — but somehow, it helps.
