Loneliness

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  One of Grumpy’s fingers was too big. In an irony visible only to his exasperated staff, Walt worried aloud that the constant revisions would suck the spontaneity from the film. Far from Walt’s office, on the studio floor, the supervising director threw drawing boards across the room, screaming, “We gotta get the picture out!” When the film was finalized, Walt could only see the flaws. To a reporter, he admitted, “I’ve seen so much of Snow White that I am conscious only of the places where it could be improved. You see, we’ve learned such a lot since we started this thing! I wish I could yank it back and do it all over again.” Ultimately, the colossal success of Snow White publicly cemented Walt’s place in cinematic history. For a time, it was the highest-grossing American film ever, making nearly $92 million in today’s dollars during its initial release. Away from the spotlight, however, it solidified Walt’s perpetual dissatisfaction. His triumph only set the bar higher for Disney magic. Despite Walt’s carefully crafted public image of the sheepish, aw-shucks “Uncle Walt,” a journalist visiting the studios noted that Walt “appeared to be under the lash of some private demon.” After the war, faced with the realities of budgets and bank loans, the studio went through a round of layoffs and budget cuts. Walt, demoralized, began to lose his drive. His future films, he fretted, would never be the jewel box masterpieces—painstaking, gorgeous, almost spiritual experiences—that the earlier ones had been. Rather than making the most of what he had or looking at the new constraints as a challenge to be mastered, he grew despondent: If the films couldn’t be perfect, what was the point in making them? Walt tried immersing himself in an old interest: model trains. “Just a hobby to get my mind off my problems,” he said, but he felt trapped and rule bound even in leisure. Tellingly, Walt wrote to a fellow railroad buff who had constructed a model railroad big enough to straddle and ride in his yard, “I envy you for having the courage to do what you want.” Caught between the false choice of perfection or failure, paralyzed by both his self-imposed standards and bank-imposed budget, Walt withdrew into himself. The Disney brand might have centered on happiness and community, but Walt increasingly found himself lonely and isolated, mostly through his own making. When presented with a formal dinner invitation, he would RSVP “NO!” in red crayon, underlined for emphasis. Amid the frenetic activity at the studio, Walt would slouch in his chair and complain, “It gets lonely around here. I just want to talk to somebody.” When lent a listening ear, however, he would ruminate aloud about his childhood hardships, and when it was his conversation partner’s turn to talk, he would leave them hanging: “Gotta get goin’!”

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  Once again, I had good reason to suspect that I had an existence. As time went on, however, he became far less reliable to show me to myself on a daily basis. He was an acquisitive man of many artistic passions, and others eventually took my place. My reflection became blurred; too many fingerprints upon the once-clear looking glass. Smeared, reduced to a smudge in his mind, I found myself dancing numbly in the black hole one more time. God had turned off the spotlight. Where am I? I cannot see. I cannot feel. I must not be. THE SEARCH Finding Paradise began decades ago with my search for God. I’ve been looking for Him since I was five, when my family moved to the Bible Belt. Everyone there seemed to know God personally except me. I asked my father. He was right about everything. “No, there is no God,” he explained. “That is for people who need it. We don’t.” But I did. Everyone at school was God-fearing and churchgoing. Could they all be wrong, and their parents, too? I was certified at birth an atheist. The deed was done. I figured that I could break the big news to all my classmates that God didn’t exist, or I could investigate God on my own, just in case they were right about Him. Now I think that one can come to believe in two ways. Either you are indoctrinated by your family and that belief stays with you for life, despite rebellion or evidence to the contrary; or you have an actual experience of God that is powerful enough to contradict your original indoctrination. So I assumed a difficult identity: that of the atheist who longs to believe—but can’t. Preordained doubt always left me yearning for a God who couldn’t exist. The Conflict was born, the Search began . The previous year, at age four, I had begun ballet classes. This simple, once-a-week affair developed over the course of the next two decades into a ten-year professional career in one of the world’s best dance companies. My mother’s original intention, however, was simply to give me a physical workout to encourage my nonexistent appetite, and to keep me out of team sports that used balls: as a child, I had an outright terror of balls of any size heading in my direction. Ballet had no balls, and thus my fears were allayed. I concentrated instead on cute outfits, red ballet slippers, and highly controlled movements.

• From How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  Caught between the false choice of perfection or failure, paralyzed by both his self-imposed standards and bank-imposed budget, Walt withdrew into himself. The Disney brand might have centered on happiness and community, but Walt increasingly found himself lonely and isolated, mostly through his own making. When presented with a formal dinner invitation, he would RSVP “NO!” in red crayon, underlined for emphasis. Amid the frenetic activity at the studio, Walt would slouch in his chair and complain, “It gets lonely around here. I just want to talk to somebody.” When lent a listening ear, however, he would ruminate aloud about his childhood hardships, and when it was his conversation partner’s turn to talk, he would leave them hanging: “Gotta get goin’!” The world Walt Disney had created—one of fantasy, innocence, and wish-upon-a-star fulfillment of dreams—stood in stark contrast to the world he lived in, where it was too precarious to loosen his grip, enjoy a genuine interest, or be a friend instead of a taskmaster. A New York Times reporter who visited the studios noted, “I came away feeling sad” to find that the brilliant man who had delighted the world’s imagination was now deflated, intransigent, craving approval but desperately lonely, and avoiding his problems by procrastinating with toy trains. * * * The popcorn machine was filled with too many kernels. As the cameras rolled on the television show The Children’s Corner, the lid bounced open and the newly popped popcorn exploded over the sides. After filming wrapped, the show’s cocreator, thirty-three-year-old Fred Rogers, said, “Now we have to do that again.” The show’s star, a bubbly young woman named Josie Carey, was mystified. “Why? That was fun! The kids will love it.” But Rogers was concerned that for younger children, the runaway popping and the ensuing mess could be disturbing. Carey threw up her hands. He was so particular, so exacting. To Carey, the popcorn spilling everywhere was exciting—it was exactly what made TV entertaining. But Fred Rogers hadn’t gotten into TV to be entertaining. According to biographer Maxwell King, Rogers’s mission on TV was “to make it better, to make it more appropriate and educational for young children. The slapstick, pie-in-the-face quality of early television was just what he wanted to change.” Rogers had high standards, deep commitment, yet also a clear-eyed vision. He paid attention to the details—he saw things and thought of nuances nobody else did. In 1961, the head of children’s television at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation thought these traits made Fred Rogers the right person to lead a quiet revolution in children’s education. “I’ve seen you talk with kids,” said the executive. “I want you to look into the lens, and just pretend that’s a child.” And so began the show that would come to be called Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Over thirty-one seasons and 895 episodes, the world would witness Rogers trade a blazer and dress shoes for his cardigan and sneakers at the start of every show, a comforting, reliable signature.

• From How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  But it turns out you and I are in a very big boat. And the boat is getting bigger. Perfectionism is on the rise. In a bold 2019 study, Dr. Thomas Curran, author of The Perfection Trap: Embracing the Power of Good Enough, and Dr. Andrew Hill examined perfectionism in over forty thousand college students over a generation, from 1989 to 2016, and discovered that perfectionism was on a steady upward march. Over the twenty-seven years of data, young people became more demanding of themselves, more demanding of others, and perceived that others were more demanding of them. Demanding a lot of yourself has probably gotten you a long way. I know it’s bought me a lot. Since you’re reading this book, I’ll bet it’s the same for you. But demanding a lot can also cost us. Perfectionism can take us down the road of Walt Disney—isolation, burn-out, chronic dissatisfaction. Luckily, it can also go the way of Fred Rogers—excellence, flexibility, magnanimity. And guess what? We can forge the path we take. We can learn to be good to ourselves even when we’re wired to be hard on ourselves. Ready? Let’s take a look. PART I Introducing Perfectionism 1 How We See Ourselves SINCE YOU PICKED up this book, I’ll bet you a jelly donut you identify with some part of Walt Disney’s or Fred Rogers’s high standards, intensity, work ethic, and commitment to doing things well. To outside observers, our lives make a lovely, framed photo of functionality, productivity, or having stuff figured out. The descriptions are flattering: overachiever, on top of everything, accomplished, successful. But I’ll bet you probably also identify with the hidden clutter just outside the frame of that lovely photo. I’m right there with you. We are our own toughest critics. Meeting our expectations for ourselves feels good temporarily but, like a burp, dissipates quickly. We have an internal cattle prod that drives us forward relentlessly, but we also get stuck in our own versions of reworking the size of Grumpy’s finger or typing anxious stream-of-consciousness notes when we’re supposed to be writing an episode script. Privately, we may feel like we’re falling behind, inadequate, left out, or not like everyone else. Despite our eagle-eyed inner quality control inspector ensuring we do things correctly, we worry about letting others down, being judged, or getting criticized. We get called some dubious labels: type A, intense, task-oriented, driven, workaholic, neat freak. Too often, we feel like Walt Disney—lonelier and more isolated than we’d like, a feeling of disconnection that goals and tasks never seem to fill. We yearn for the heaven of Fred Rogers—compassion, purpose, community, belonging.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  He was deposed and excommunicated by the pope, July 3, 1549, and fled over Bergamo to the Grisons. He remained there till 1553, with occasional journeys to the Valtellina, Chiavenna, Zürich, Bern, and Basel. He was hospitably received, and developed great activity in preaching and writing. People of all classes gathered around him, and were impressed by his commanding presence and eloquence. He founded a printing-press in Poschiavo in 1549, and issued from it his thunderbolts against popery. He preached at Pontresina and Samaden in the Upper Engadin, and effected the abolition of the mass and the images. He labored as pastor three years (1550–53) at Vicosoprano in Bregaglia. He travelled through the greater part of Switzerland, and made the acquaintance of Bullinger, Calvin, and Beza. But the humble condition of the Grisons did not satisfy his ambition. He felt isolated, and complained of the inhospitable valleys. He disliked the democratic institutions. He quarrelled with the older Reformers, Comander and Gallicius. He tried to get the whole Synod of the Grisons under his control, and, failing in this, to organize a separate synod of the Italian congregations. Then he aspired to a more prominent position at Zürich or Geneva or Bern, but Bullinger and Calvin did not trust him.

• From How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  One session, she welled up as she described the scene in the 2019 film Someone Great where Gina Rodriguez’s character, in a T-shirt and underwear, drunkenly unloads groceries with her best friend while they belt Lizzo lyrics and dance dorkily around the kitchen. “I don’t have any friends like that,” she reflected. “And you know what? Even if I did, it wouldn’t occur to me that I could let loose like that with them.” She sighed. She had a circle of friends, she said, but she felt peripheral, like the Dear Evan Hansen song: “On the outside, always looking in.” She yearned to be closer—to go deeper—but wasn’t sure how to make it happen. We’ll dive into Jamila’s story in chapter 15, where we cover building closer relationships. And, dear reader, let me tell you, I see perfectionism in myself. There’s a saying for authors: “Write the book you need.” If How to Be Yourself was the book I needed twenty years ago, the book you’re holding is the book I need now. Mostly my striver traits have served me well. I have high standards for myself, which in school led to good grades and high achievement. More than one person has said to me, “Wow, Ellen, when you set a goal, you just go out and do it.” I am detail-oriented—I am the one in my family who knows where the scissors are and notices when we are almost out of toilet paper, two neurons of knowledge that may seem small but make a big difference when someone is in immediate need of either. I am prudent; I’ve convinced my boys that I can see the future. When they’re tossing water balloons in the living room or playing a game they invented called Make Me Say “Ow,”* I foresee the result and take appropriate action to prevent it. But I’ve definitely tipped into problematic perfectionism in other areas. My approach to work, for years, was to overload myself, inevitably fail to keep up, and continually stress about it, wondering what was wrong with me and beating myself up when I procrastinated because I felt so overwhelmed. I felt like I wasn’t doing anything well, so I kept putting more on my plate. One miraculous day, I actually crossed off every item on my list, but it required sixteen hours, I fell into bed with a headache and a stomachache, and it took me three days to get back on track.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Me pasa trescientos dólares, y tenemos un letrero que dice que no aceptamos billetes mayores de cincuenta, pero viendo la cantidad de dinero en su billetera, no me siento cómoda al decírselo. Tomo el dinero y le doy el cambio. Da golpecitos sobre el mostrador mientras espera, y me doy cuenta que está siguiendo el ritmo de The Distance por Cake que Danni colocó en el altavoz del lobby. —Oh, no haga eso —bromeo, dándole su cambio—. Alentará al dueño. Estoy intentado convencerla que su música está alejando a los clientes. Toma el dinero y me lanza una mirada. —La música de los noventa es la mejor. Es cuando las personas decían la verdad. Curvo la comisura de mis labios, sin querer discutir más. Claramente él bebió del mismo Kool-Aid que ella. —Gracias —dice, tomando las llaves. Le regreso su identificación, y lo observo alejarse. Afuera, reparte las llaves a las señoritas, y después de un momento, todos se dirigen a sus habitaciones. Estoy medio tentada a ir a la ventana y ver si va con una de ellas. O las cinco de ellas. Tengo mucha curiosidad. —¿Era un cliente? —pregunta Danni detrás de mí, y miró hacia atrás, viéndola caminar a la oficina. El departamento donde vive con su abuela está detrás de la oficina, así que es fácil pasar y revisar si se necesita algo. —Sí —le digo—. Pidió cinco habitaciones para la noche, y está viajando con al menos media docena de mujeres, así que diviértete con el turno nocturno. Se burla y camina, tomando el contrato. —¿Tyler Durden? —Lee su nombre, entrecerrando los ojos por encima de sus lentes. Asiento, jalando un cabello de su camisa de franela. Ella incluso se viste como en los noventa. —¿No tomaste su identificación? —Me hace una mueca—. Es un nombre falso. —Su identificación decía Tyler Durden —digo—. ¿Por qué piensas que es un nombre falso? —Tyler Durden es el personaje principal en Fight Club —dice, como si fuera una idiota—. La mejor película de los noventa, y uno de los mejores libros. Es desconcertante que no sepas eso, Jordan. Me río, moviendo la cabeza. Ella quizás sea un año mayor que yo, pero estamos a mundos de distancia en intereses. Fight Club. Mi sonrisa se desvanece, y bajo la mirada, regresando a la computadora. He visto la película, pero ese nombre no me sonaba. Y había visto recientemente la película también, con Pike… Trago. Siento un nudo en el pecho. Mierda. Había estado bastante bien las últimas semanas, girando mi atención a otra parte, para no pensar en él. Había sido tan difícil al inicio, pero no verlo todos los días lo había vuelto más fácil. Fue correcto haberme ido como lo hice.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  La puerta se abre, y Pike se queda allí, sosteniendo la perilla, pero se mantiene plantado en el pasillo. —Voy a pedir pizza para la cena —me dice—. ¿Cole estará en casa pronto? Jugueteo con el lápiz en mis manos. —Uno de sus amigos fue promovido en la compañía de cable —le explico—, así que van a tener una fiesta en la granja de su padre. Estoy segura que llegará bastante tarde. Se queda allí un momento, su gran cuerpo llena toda la puerta. Mis ojos siguen moviéndose hacia los tatuajes en sus brazos, así que simplemente miro hacia abajo, pretendiendo estar absorta en mi trabajo. —¿No vas a ir? —presiona. Extiendo las manos, haciendo un gesto hacia la tarea frente a mí. Asiente, comprendiendo. —Bueno… —me mira por un momento, parece inseguro y luego continúa—, tienes que comer también, ¿no? ¿Qué tipo de pizza te gusta? —No, está bien —le digo, negando—. Ya comí. Sus ojos se posan en el plato con el sándwich de mantequilla de maní a medio comer en la cama, y sé lo que está pensando. —Bueno. Se mueve para cerrar la puerta, pero luego se detiene. —Sabes que no necesitas esconderte aquí, ¿verdad? Miro hacia arriba, enderezando mi columna vertebral. —No me estoy escondiendo. —Me río un poco para disimular, pero creo que me ha atrapado. —Estás haciendo los quehaceres —afirma—. Estás pagando por tu derecho a estar en la casa. Entonces, si quieres usar la piscina o traer un amigo o te gusta… salir de la habitación, está bien. Me lamo los labios secos. —Sí, lo sé. —Está bien —dice finalmente—. Supongo que comeré la pizza solo entonces. Tendré sobras durante días, como de costumbre. —Suspira, sonando más patético. —Entonces no pidas una grande —balbuceo, mirando mi libreta de nuevo. Pero su risa silenciosa antes de cerrar la puerta me dice que escuchó mi comentario sabihondo. Estoy segura que ha pedido muchas pizzas en todos los años que ha vivido aquí solo. Solo está tratando de ser amable y hacerme sentir bienvenida. Lo cual es genial por su parte, y lo aprecio, pero aun así no me hace sentir como menos que una vividora. No puedo dejar que me compre pizza también. Y pienso en lo sola que me sentí al crecer en el remolque de mi padre e incluso lo sola que me he sentido con Cole a veces. Tal vez Pike Lawson está cansado de estar solo, de comer solo y de ver televisión solo, soy una invitada en su casa y tal vez le gustaría conocer a las personas que viven bajo su techo, ¿verdad? Es solo razonable. Y tal vez estoy cansada de estar sola mucho, también, y tal vez todavía tengo hambre y la pizza suena bastante bien, en realidad. Suelto un suspiro y aparto la libreta de mi regazo antes de ponerme de pie. Corriendo hacia la puerta del dormitorio, la abro y miro afuera. —¿Pizza de Joe’s? —pregunto, viéndolo justo antes que bajara las escaleras.

• From Delta of Venus (1977)

  I walked carefully up the Boulevard Raspail feeling lonely and intending to go to the Dome and talk to someone. I finally reached it. It was overcrowded, half-full of soldiers, half-full of the usual whores and models, but many of the artists were gone. Most of them had been called home, each one to his own country. There were no Americans left, no more Spaniards, and no more German refugees sitting about. It was a French atmosphere again. I sat down and was soon joined by Gisele, a young woman I had talked with a few times. She was glad to see me. She said she could not stay at home. Her brother had been called, and the house was sad. Then another friend, Roger, sat at our table. Soon we were five. All of us had come to the café to be with people. All of us felt lonely. The darkness isolated one, it made going out difficult. One was driven indoors—so as not to be alone. We all wanted this. We sat there enjoying the lights, the drinks. The soldiers were animated, everyone was friendly. All the barriers were down. People did not wait for introductions. Everyone was in equal danger and shared the same need of companionship and affection and warmth. Later I said to Roger, “Let’s go out.” I wanted to be in the dark streets again. We walked slowly, cautiously. We came to an Arabian restaurant that I liked and went in. People were sitting around the very low tables. A fleshy Arabian woman was dancing. Men would give her money and she would place it on her breasts and go on dancing. Tonight the place was full of soldiers, and they were drunk on the heavy Arabian wine. The dancer was drunk, too. She never wore very much, hazy, transparent skirts and a belt, but now the skirt had slit open and when she did her belly dance, it revealed the pubic hair dancing. The massive flesh around it trembling. One of the officers offered her a ten-franc piece and said, “Pick it up with your cunt.” Fatima was not at all disturbed. She walked to his table, laid the ten-franc piece on the very edge of it, spread her legs a little and gave a twist like those she did in the dance, so that the lips of her vulva touched the money. At first she could not catch it. While she tried to do this, she made a sucking sound, and the soldiers were laughing and excited by the sight. Finally the lips of the vulva stiffened sufficiently around the piece of money and she picked it up.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  He himself was in no hurry to get married, and put it off till he was over thirty. He rather boasted that people could not charge him with having assailed Rome, as the Greeks besieged Troy, for the sake of a woman. What led him first to think of it, was the sense of loneliness and the need of proper care, that he might be able the better to serve the Church. He had a housekeeper, with her son, a woman of violent temper who sorely tried his patience. At one time she abused his brother so violently that he left the house, and then she ran away, leaving her son behind. The disturbance made him sick.585 He was often urged by his friend Farel (who himself found no time to think of marrying till his old age), and by Bucer, to take a wife, that he might enjoy the comforts of a well-ordered home. He first mentions the subject in a letter to Farel, from Strassburg, May 19, 1539, in which he says: "I am none of those insane lovers who, when once smitten with the fine figure of a woman, embrace also her faults. This only is the beauty which allures me, if she be chaste, obliging, not fastidious, economical, patient, and careful for my health.586 Therefore, if you think well of it, set out immediately, lest some one else [Bucer?] gets the start of you. But if you think otherwise we will let it pass." It seems Farel could not find a person that combined all these qualities, and the matter was dropped for several months. In Feb. 6, 1540, Calvin, in a letter to the same friend, touched again upon the subject of matrimony, but only incidentally, as if it were a subordinate matter. After informing him about his trouble with Caroli, his discussion with Hermann, an Anabaptist, the good understanding of Charles V. and Francis I., and the alarm of the Protestant princes of Germany, he goes on to say: "Nevertheless, in the midst of such commotions as these, I am so much at my ease as to have the audacity to think of taking a wife. A certain damsel of noble rank has been proposed to me,587 and with a fortune above my condition. Two considerations deterred me from that connection—because she did not understand our language, and because I feared she might be too mindful of her family and education."588 He sent his brother for another lady, who was highly recommended to him. He expected to get married March 10, and invited Farel to celebrate the wedding. But this project also failed, and he thought of abandoning all further attempts.

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  What our experiment suggests, then, is that by learning to love more frequently, you reduce your risks for many of the worst health conditions that we all dread. Currently, my PEP Lab is pushing to learn even more about the biological pathways that account for the various health benefits of loving connections by investigating how love changes you at the cellular level. We now periodically draw blood from all our study volunteers and, in collaboration with UCLA genomics expert Steve Cole, we’re tracking how random assignment to the “love” condition changes the ways people’s DNA gets expressed within their cells. Past work discovered that chronic loneliness—a persistent yearning for more positivity resonance—compromises the ways a person’s genes are expressed, particularly in aspects of the white blood cells of the immune system that govern inflammation. We’re testing the hypothesis that learning to increase the frequency of loving connections alters gene expression in ways that fortify disease resistance and in turn keep people in good health. Insight into how everyday moments of love register and resonate within the human body helps make sense of the groundswell of evidence that links experiences of positive social connections to health and longevity. Mountains of research have documented that people who have diverse and rewarding relationships with others are healthier and live longer. A more recent wave of longitudinal studies specifically ties positive emotions to healthy longevity. These studies suggest that a lack of positivity resonance is in fact more damaging to your health than smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol excessively, or being obese. Specifically, these studies tell us that people who experience more warm and caring connections with others have fewer colds, lower blood pressure, and less often succumb to heart disease and stroke, diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, and some cancers. Many of the key conditions that threaten to set you back or shorten your life can thus be staved off by upgrading how and how frequently you connect with others. Love 2.0: The View from Here Love, as we’ve seen here, ripples out through space and time. In a moment of positivity resonance, studies show, your awareness automatically expands, allowing you to appreciate more than you typically do. Also quite automatically, your body leans in toward and affirms the other person, and begins a subtle synchronized dance that further reinforces your connection. Over time, these powerful moments change who you are. They help expand your network of relationships and grow your resilience, wisdom, and physical health. These ripples don’t just affect you. They also affect the people with whom you share your moments of positivity resonance. So as you upgrade your view of love and learn to cultivate more micro-moments of it, you not only get benefits, you give benefits. This repeated back-and-forth sharing, however small or subtle, helps establish and strengthen healthy communities and cultures. “You are made in the image of what you desire,” Thomas Merton said.

• From How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  At long last, introverts are having their day. Over the last few years, being quiet and inner directed has become not only acceptable but also downright trendy, with candidates as unlikely as Amy Schumer, Guy Kawasaki, and Kim Kardashian claiming the introvert mantle. Personally, I remember reading Susan Cain’s 2012 bestseller, Quiet, and feeling astonished. How did she know I preferred reading to partying and working alone rather than in forced collaboration? To be sure, I enjoy social gatherings, but I have to recharge afterwards. I need to interact with people throughout the day to keep from getting bored and lonely, but I much prefer one-on-one to a big mix. You may be a non-anxious introvert. You may love solitude and intimate gatherings but still be comfortable in the presence of others, including strangers and authority figures. You may dislike big parties or receptions because they sap your energy, not because they make you want to hide under the buffet table. You are quietly confident and quietly comfortable in your own skin. You may also be a socially anxious extrovert, one of the 9 percent of the uninhibited kids in the Kagan lab’s follow-up study. This is exquisitely torturous—imagine getting your energy from people while simultaneously being afraid of them. For example, you may really want to go to the bar with your co-workers but worry they don’t want you there. Or you may love parties but obsess about saying something stupid. You may feel pulled to the microphone but petrified by the crowd. You may be psyched for weekend plans with friends but get overwhelmed and cancel at the last minute, leaving you with a reputation for being flakier than a croissant. To top it off, while the introvert finds time alone refreshing, the extrovert finds it draining; indeed, too much time alone leaves an extrovert with the energy and motivation of a slug. The no-win choice? Feel lonely and sluggish or awkward and scared. While being an anxious extrovert feels like being stuck between a rock and an angsty place, no one mistakes extroversion for anxiety. With introversion and social anxiety, however, it’s fuzzier. Because it’s common to be a socially anxious introvert, the two terms often get used interchangeably. Sometimes social anxiety is even thought to be a more extreme form of introversion. But while the root of behavioral inhibition gives rise to both introversion and social anxiety and the two often manifest together in the same people, the concepts are actually quite different. Far from being a psychological tomato-tomahto, introversion and social anxiety are more like apple and orange. So what’s the bright line between an introverted temperament to be honored and social fear to be challenged? Four things. First, introversion is born, while social anxiety is made. Both Jim and Jennifer came out of the womb with behavioral inhibition, but remember, two things were necessary to trigger Jim’s social anxiety. Let’s say it together: learning and avoidance.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  cuando me di cuenta que había estado esperando que mi vida comenzara —mi vida real— solo para darme cuenta que ya había ocurrido cuando no estaba prestando atención. Ese tren que estaba esperando para abordar, pasó a mi lado sin detenerse. Probablemente no habría una esposa, y nunca sabría lo que sería criar a mis hijos todos los días. En este punto, estoy demasiado acostumbrado a estar solo que soy como un hijo único. Y un hijo único no sabe cómo compartir sus cosas. Todd apuesta otro dólar, y yo salgo, seguido por Lin, Dutch y Eddie. Todd recoge el bote, y Dutch mezcla todas las cartas, repartiendo nuevamente. La música del piso de arriba, de repente, resuena cada vez más fuerte, y escucho pisadas en las escaleras seguidas por una puerta que se cierra. Los pies descalzos aparecen en el hueco de la escalera, las piernas se hacen más visibles a medida que descienden. Jordan se agacha, mirando debajo del techo del sótano. —Oye, ¿te importa si saco los Otter Pops7 del congelador? Todos la miran, girando sus cabezas, y hago un gesto, apenas apartando la mirada de mis cartas. —Sí, adelante —respondo rápidamente. Un calor líquido corre por mis brazos, y me miro la mano, luchando por concentrarme, porque ella es de lo único que estoy consciente ahora. Baja apresuradamente el resto de las escaleras, con pasos ligeros y rápidos como si tratara de no ser vista o escuchada mientras se lanza hacia la pared a mi derecha y levanta la tapa del gran congelador. La habitación se ha vuelto silenciosa, y no estoy seguro si los muchachos tienen miedo de hablar normalmente, porque hay una mujer en la habitación o si están distraídos. Miro mis cartas y busco en mi cerebro. ¿De qué estábamos hablando hace un minuto? Oh, niños. Claro. Escucho cosas que se mueven en el congelador y echo un vistazo, mi mirada inmediatamente cae a sus pies. Está de puntillas e inclinada, sosteniendo la tapa con una mano mientras rebusca en el enorme contenedor. Parece ser consciente de sus 7Helados pantalones cortos y que está agachada frente a una mesa de hombres, porque se endereza en unos pocos segundos y se baja los pantalones tanto como puede. Las uñas de sus pies están pintadas de un color rosa suave, y puedo decir que está usando un bikini debajo de su camisa gris. Las tiras son visibles atadas detrás de su cuello, y puedo ver más a través de los costados de su camiseta sin mangas, las que están recortadas, mostrando la piel curva y bronceada de su cintura. Los músculos en sus muslos se flexionan, y mi estómago se revuelve. Empiezo a mirar mis cartas, pero la veo metiendo su cabello detrás de sus orejas, y es entonces cuando noto los pequeños agujeros en la camiseta. En el hombro, por la costura. ¿Esa es…? —¿No es esa tu camiseta? —susurra Dutch, inclinado hacia mí.

• From City of Night (1963)

  Times Square is the magnet for all the lonesome exiles jammed into this city.... And this is how I found that world of Times Square. In the incessantly running showers of the Sloane House YMCA the day I arrived in New York, the big hairy man made conversation with me; where am I from and what am I doing and am I working yet (“No? Good. I mean good that you dont have to be anywhere at a set time.”), and will I come to his room and he’ll buy hamburgers. Hes a merchant marine, tanned from a recent Voyage to somefarwhere—on his way now to Boston with I imagine a roll of money big enough to make me greedy. Unfairly, Im almost broke—$20.00 when I left Chicago, and one phone number what said nervously we must have lunch sometime. And no prospect of a job which will pay me before the money runs out. In the tiny cubicle-room facing the courtyard across which a lonesome youngman, also undoubtedly just arrived in the City, played a doleful guitar by his window, we sit eating oniony greaseburgers and ignoring the persistent sound of the running showers. For a moment, I think it’s the hurricane. Outside, in the hallway, doors open and close. The sound of feet walking up and down never stops. A hurried conversation outside, a door closes. Even before this man speaks it, I know that something of what Ive come to find in this city will soon be revealed in this room. “They dont call this Y the French Embassy for nothing,” the merchant marine laughs. He has sized me up slyly: broke and green in the big city—and he said: “You wouldnt be broke if youd been at Mary’s last night—thats a place in the Village and everything goes.” He watches me evenly for some reaction, determining, Im sure, how far he can go how quickly. “So I spot this cute kid there—” Hes still studying me carefully, and when I dont say anything, he continues with more assurance: “So I spot him and I want him—yeah, sure, Im queer—whatya expect?” he challenges. He pauses longer this time, watching me still calculatingly. He goes on: “And the kid’s looking for maybe a pad to flop in and breakfast—hes not queer himself, I dont like em queer: If I did, Id go with a woman—why fuck around with substitutes?... So this kid goes with me—Im feeling Good, just off the ship, flush—I lay 50 bucks on him.” A strange new excitement wells inside me. He adds slyly, confident now that hes got me interested: “If youda been there I woulda preferred you....” He places his hairy hand on my leg. “Unfortunately, Im almost broke now,” he says, “but I got some more pay coming soon.” I stand up quickly; pause only for a moment at the door. He calls after me:

• From City of Night (1963)

  I paid $8.50 a week for the room. Opposite my window, in another wing of the same building, lived an old man who coughed all night. Sometimes he kept me awake. Sometimes it was the old, old woman who staggered up and down the hallway whistling, checking to see that no one had left the water running in the bathrooms or the gas burning in the community kitchen. At times it was Gene de Lancey—the woman with the demented eyes I had met the first day in the hallway—who kept me up. Once she had been Beautiful—she had sighingly shown me pictures of herself, then! —now she was sadly faded, and her eyes burned with the knowledge. She seldom went out, although I did see her on the street one late afternoon, shielding her face with her hand. She’d knock on my door sometimes early in the morning, often as I had just walked in: I would wonder if she listened for me to come in. I would open the door, and shes standing there in a Japanese kimono. “Lambie-pie,” she’d say in a childish whimper, “I just couldnt sleep, I just gotta have a cigarette and talk—Steve’s asleep—” That was her present husband. “—and I knew you wouldnt mind, sweetie.” She would sit and talk into the morning, with such passion, such lonesomeness, that I couldnt bring myself to ask her to leave. She would tell me about how everyone she had ever loved had left her: her mother, dead—her father, constantly sending her to boarding schools as a girl—her two previous husbands, Gone—her son, disappeared. “Theres no love in this harsh world,” she lamented. “Everybody’s hunting for Something—but what?” When, finally, she would get up, she would Kiss me on the cheek and leave quickly.... I mentioned her to Pete, and he says: “Great, man, she sounds like a swinging nympho—lets make it with her together sometime!” Like the rest of us on that street—who played the male role with other men—Pete was touchy about one subject: his masculinity. In Bickford’s one afternoon, a goodlooking masculine youngman walked in, looked at us, walked out again hurriedly. “That cat’s queer,” Pete says, glaring at him. “I used to see him and I thought he was hustling, and one day he tried to put the make on me in the flix. It bugged me, him thinking I was queer or something. I told him fuck off, I wasnt gonna make it for free.” He was moodily silent for a long while, and then he said almost belligerently. “Whatever a guy does with other guys, if he does it for money, that dont make him queer. Youre still straight. It’s when you start doing it for free, with other young guys, that you start growing wings.”...

• From City of Night (1963)

  But that world exists not only along the streets; it extends into the movie theaters. And the moviehouse toilets on 42nd Street and the toilets in the subways—with the pleading scrawled messages—form the boiling subterranean world of Times Square. Steps lead down from the moviehouse lobbies as if into a dungeon—and in the toilet, the purpose may be realized, and you walk up the steps—aware of the danger after the danger is over—you and he complete strangers again after the cold intimacy. You may move from the dungeon into the cavern of the moviebalconies and try to score again: swallowed instantly by that giant wolfmouth of dark at the opening of which the dreamworld of a certain movie is being projected: the actors like ghosts from an altogether Different world.... By now winter was approaching in New York. Hurricanes and threats of hurricanes had stopped, and the air was clear. Daily the leaves turned browner, the orange disappeared. Along the walks in the parks, leaves fell like rejected brown stars. As the weather had changed, from hurricane warnings to cool, I had stood along 42nd Street and Bryant Park waiting to be picked up, and with the changing season I felt a change within me too: a frantic lonesomeness that sometimes took me, paradoxically, to the height of elation, then flung me into depression. The figure of my Mother standing by the kitchen door crying, watching me leave, hovered ghostlike over me, but in the absence of that overwhelming tearing love—away from it if only physically—I felt a violent craving for something indefinable. Throughout those weeks, on 42nd Street, the park, the moviehouses, I had learned to sift the different types that haunted those places: The queens swished by in superficial gayety—giggling males acting like teenage girls; eyeing the youngmen coquettishly: but seldom offering more than a place to stay for the night. And I could spot the scores easily—the men who paid other men sexmoney, anywhere from $5.00—usually more—but sometimes even less (for some, meals and drinks and a place to stay); the amount determined by the time of the day, the day of the week, the place of execution of the sexscene: their apartment, a rented room, a public toilet; their franticness, your franticness; their manner of dress, indicating affluence or otherwise; the competition on the street—the other youngmen stationed along the block like tattered guards for that defeated army which, Somehow, life had spewed out, Rejected.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Pero incluso después de terminar el colegio, estaré tan ajustada de dinero con los préstamos estudiantiles que frivolidades como bolsos de diseñador seguirán siendo una posibilidad muy remota. Y por extraño que parezca, me parece bien. Prefiero tener un auto decente. Una casa. La capacidad de pagar todas mis cuentas el mismo mes. Selena y yo estamos viviendo problemas completamente diferentes, y me identifico con ella incluso menos ahora que cuando estábamos en el colegio. Estoy segura que el sentimiento es mutuo. Sin inventar alguna excusa para escapar, solo doy la vuelta y me alejo hacia un lado del edifico, saco mi celular. —Hola, Jordan. ¿Estás bien? —Escucho a Carter. Giro mi cabeza, viéndolo de pie con los otros, y asiento. Una vez que llego a un lugar más silencioso, llamo a Cam y sostengo el teléfono contra mi oreja, lanzando mi vaso desocupado en el contenedor de basura. —Hola —dice con voz chillona, sabiendo que soy yo. —Hola —digo, su voz me relaja inmediatamente—. ¿Estás trabajando? ¿Puedes venir y recogerme? —Estoy trabajando —me dice—, pero puedo tomarme un descanso por media hora. ¿Dónde estás? ¿Todo está bien? Noto la música en el fondo y me doy cuenta que está trabajando. —Sí, todo está bien. —Meto mi cabello detrás de mi oreja—. Estoy en el A&W. Solo quiero ir a casa. Casa. Hago una pausa cada vez que lo digo, sabiendo muy bien que no es realmente mi casa, pero también se siente extraño decir, “La casa de Pike” o” La casa del papá de Cole”. Después de terminar la llamada, voy al baño primero y luego le informo a Carter que conseguí quién me lleve a casa. Momentáneamente hay desilusión en su rostro, estoy bastante segura que es porque perdió su ligue para esta noche. Aunque, no estoy muy segura de cómo pensó que lo sería de todos modos, especialmente después de ignorarme para hablar sobre autos y después estar demasiado feliz al dejarme para "ponerme al día" con un grupo de chicas. Nunca antes hice nada como ponerme al día, incluso en la escuela secundaria. No es que realmente haya nada malo con Carter, Selena o con cualquier otra persona aquí. Pero cuando hablan, te das cuenta que tienen cosas bonitas, como

• From City of Night (1963)

  We avoided looking at each other. “I’ll see you around The Street,” he said at the door. “Man,” he says—but his voice was forced, as mine was, “I got a real tough score lined up today—hes worth Twenty.” “Later,” I said. “Later—spote,” he said. I saw him again, many times—in the movie theaters, in Bryant Park, on Times Square. We would say hello to each other, stop, talk casually: He would exaggerate his scores, I would exaggerate mine. But we were never together for long any more. “I have to score,” one of us would say, and we’d split. Soon we wouldnt stop to talk to each other when we met. We would say hello, rush on.... And then one day, one stifling summer day, I saw him bouncing along the street in my direction. I turned sharply, pretended to be looking at some movie posters; and glancing back once, briefly, I notice that he—for the same reason I had turned away, to avoid meeting—had crossed to the other side of the street. CITY OF NIGHT THE WORLD OF TIMES SQUARE was a world which I was certain I had sought out willingly—not a world which had summoned me. And because I believed that, its lure, for me, was much more powerful. I flung myself into it Summer had come angrily into New York with the impact of a panting animal. Relentless hot nights follow scorching afternoons. Trains grinding along the purgatorial subway tunnels (compressing the heat ferociously, while at times, on the lurching cars, a crew of Negro urchins dance appropriately to the jungle-rhythmed bongoes) expel the crowds—From All Points—at the Times Square stop.... And the streets are jammed with sweating faces. The chilled hustling of winter now becomes the easy hustling of summer. At the beginning of the warm days, the corps of newyork cops feels the impending surge of street-activity, and for a few days the newspapers are full of reports of raids: UNDESIRABLES NABBED. The cops scour Times Square. But as the summerdays proceed in sweltering intensity, the cops relent, as if themselves bogged down by the heat. Then they merely walk up and down the streets telling you to move on, move on. Inevitably youre back in the same spot. For me, a pattern which would guide my life on the streets had already emerged clearly.

• From City of Night (1963)

  I had an acute sense of the incompleteness intrinsic in sharing in another’s life. You touch those other lives, barely—however intimately it may be sexually—you may sense things roiling in them. Yet the climax in your immediate relationship with them is merely an interlude. Their lives will continue, youll merely step out. A series of encounters multiplying geometrically.... A prismatic network of... (I remember the Professor, I see the tiny eyes behind the thick glasses) “interviews.” Like mechanical dolls, people around me along the blocks proceed doggedly to their various morning destinations; wait, mobbed, at the stoplights, restlessly pausing before rushing at each other, meeting in a melée in the middle of the street. They will brush shoulders, unaware, stumble, move on: each person enclosed by his own immediate world. Suddenly, unexplainably, I wanted to laugh. The grinding journey to—... Where? In a few days, by the beginning of autumn, I was back in El Paso. As I opened the door of my mother’s house, I saw her standing there waiting for me. She hugged me fiercely to her, and I glanced beyond her at the fragile case with the glass angels.... Now there were steps to retrace. I called the girl I had climbed Cristo Rey with. Her father answered: She was gone; married; she had a baby.... Alone, I returned to climb that mountain. Here, on Holy days, I had seen long processions of people from El Paso, Ysleta, Canutillo, Smeltertown, Juarez, as they marched up chanting devout prayers—kneeling at intervals, shawled ladies gripping rosaries. The priests leading the procession; men carrying sadfaced saints.... Under the hot white sun, I had wanted to be... then... a part of that belief that transfixed those faces as they climbed. And at the top of that mountain—now, years later—I wondered suddenly if emotionally I had really ever left this city. Almost physically, as I walked down, I could feel those very mountains which awesomely rim the city crushing me as in that childhood dream. But of course it was something else: the memories of that childhood which I had tried to bandage by fleeing the spurious innocence. Returning here again, I felt how easily I could regress to those early attitudes. The memory of the guarded isolation of that window (in that house which we had vacated, that house where my dog had died) drew me again to a craving for a powerful symbolic window away from the world. If I was to resist these lulling echoes, within this very city I had to usurp those memories....

• From Delta of Venus (1977)

  I walked carefully up the Boulevard Raspail feeling lonely and intending to go to the Dome and talk to someone. I finally reached it. It was overcrowded, half-full of soldiers, half-full of the usual whores and models, but many of the artists were gone. Most of them had been called home, each one to his own country. There were no Americans left, no more Spaniards, and no more German refugees sitting about. It was a French atmosphere again. I sat down and was soon joined by Gisele, a young woman I had talked with a few times. She was glad to see me. She said she could not stay at home. Her brother had been called, and the house was sad. Then another friend, Roger, sat at our table. Soon we were five. All of us had come to the café to be with people. All of us felt lonely. The darkness isolated one, it made going out difficult. One was driven indoors—so as not to be alone. We all wanted this. We sat there enjoying the lights, the drinks. The soldiers were animated, everyone was friendly. All the barriers were down. People did not wait for introductions. Everyone was in equal danger and shared the same need of companionship and affection and warmth. Later I said to Roger, “Let’s go out.” I wanted to be in the dark streets again. We walked slowly, cautiously. We came to an Arabian restaurant that I liked and went in. People were sitting around the very low tables. A fleshy Arabian woman was dancing. Men would give her money and she would place it on her breasts and go on dancing. Tonight the place was full of soldiers, and they were drunk on the heavy Arabian wine. The dancer was drunk, too. She never wore very much, hazy, transparent skirts and a belt, but now the skirt had slit open and when she did her belly dance, it revealed the pubic hair dancing. The massive flesh around it trembling. One of the officers offered her a ten-franc piece and said, “Pick it up with your cunt.” Fatima was not at all disturbed. She walked to his table, laid the ten-franc piece on the very edge of it, spread her legs a little and gave a twist like those she did in the dance, so that the lips of her vulva touched the money. At first she could not catch it. While she tried to do this, she made a sucking sound, and the soldiers were laughing and excited by the sight. Finally the lips of the vulva stiffened sufficiently around the piece of money and she picked it up.