The Lonely

            Sometimes I find it important to write a piece not just for myself but with the other lonely hearts out there in the world on my mind. I sometimes see the isolation and loneliness in the words and deeds of a lot of the people I know and it makes me want to help. I can’t always be there for them, but I hope that I can provide some literary encouragement that they will take to heart because then they’ll know they aren’t so alone.

            I have a few friends that find themselves in the same club I seem to be the President and lifetime member of. I call it the Lonely Hearts Club. We are perpetually finding the wrong people to date or are inconceivably dateless, even though we’re pretty darn good people. A few of us turn to alcohol to try and diffuse the intolerability of our situations but that normally back-fires because we end up drunk and moaning on our respective couches at 4:30 in the morning wondering what forest witch cursed us with these lonely hearts. Damn Forest witches. It’s a very vicious cycle and it only makes us feel worse.

            A few of us have crazy high standards and are waiting for the right person, the exact right person, to come along and sweep us off our feet and assure us that everything will be awesome from now on. We simply refuse to lower those standards and we continue to wait for Mr. or Ms. Right, like a fat kid in the winter, staring through a frost covered window, waiting for the ice cream truck. It’s never going to come.

            Some of us have become jaded by the terrible on-line dating world in which even the most desirable person we talk with is probably a 69 year old Russian man who’s trying to kill time while acting as a security guard at the white sex slave trafficking depot. His screen name is PrettyBabeBangs69. He’s also a forest witch.

            It baffles me at times why some of the members of the Lonely Hearts Club just don’t get together and end each others soloist misery. I know some combinations wouldn’t work for certain, some people’s personalities aren’t compatible within the Club, but that doesn’t hold true for every member. I know that within the confines of the Club there is bound to be a good match. A lasting, fun, intelligent, compassionate, caring, loving even, match of two people that just can’t seem to get their collective crap together enough to acknowledge each other, or at least for one to acknowledge the other.

            So we roll on, struggling on the long Sunday nights, watching TV alone on those suffering couches. We bare the questions from family and friends about if we’re dating anyone with a strong reluctant smile. We can only say the customary and accepted, “Not right now, but I’m looking,” and then excuse ourselves so we can get another beer. It’s rough. I know it better than most. (Having been President of the Lonely Hearts Club for the last 5 ½ years)

            I can only say that I don’t know what will happen, but I have faith that something will. For all of the lonely hearts out there, struggling with the mundane, wishing for someone in their lives to make it less of a struggle, I know it’ll get better. A partner is out there somewhere, sometimes right under our noses. We might just have to take a second to look down, wipe away the coke, look under the beer bottle, wave off the cigarette smoke, and see a beautiful pair of eyes looking right at us, longing for everything we have to offer. Because we do have a lot to offer. I’ll swear to it until they find my bloated lonely corpse in a puddle of my own bodily fluids in an IHOP bathroom.

            Forest Witch probably killed me.