towards belonging
an ongoing process
One of the most beautiful things in the world: a stranger waits at a bar or a restaurant or in the park. They have a sullen stone face and seem a bit uncomfortable, adjusting their hair, picking lint off their sleeve, checking their phone. Maybe they spend some time scrolling, put their phone down, and look around a bit. And then, a shift — eyes soften, cheeks turn to a smile, body rises as they get up to meet their late-arriving friend, their partner, their date. The air is lighter, the silent stranger turned chatterbox; the newfound duo glows.
When you go places alone, you witness the beauty of connection in real-time, make up stories in your head of who these people are and how they know each other. I imagine the woman with the leather jacket is meeting her childhood friend visiting from across the country, I pretend the words that I can’t hear are inside jokes that span decades. Or maybe they’re little more than strangers, meeting up for the first time and laughing with nervous energy. At one time, I would sting with envy as I witnessed such a scene, wondering what it would feel like to relax into another’s presence like that.
I’ve briefly mentioned my own loneliness before, something that I’d been able to largely conquer due to the grace of my friends and kindness of people around me, something that motivates me to exude enough kindness to extinguish it from those around me. Loneliness hasn’t left me, but it’s no longer the omnipresent specter it once was, a shroud I couldn’t shed as much as I tried. It still arrives every now and then but as a ghost of its former self, only able to hold onto me for a beat or two.
Even as I’ve found a sense of belonging now, I recognize that it’s fragile. The world we live in doesn’t feel like it was built for connection — the arc of society today, the arc of growing older seems to bend towards loneliness as the default. I live in a transient city of transplants, one where anyone and everyone could suddenly pick up and move to New York or LA or somewhere else entirely. To avoid loneliness in a place like San Francisco, continuing to meet new people to maintain a sense of belonging feels essential.
This year, I’ve been focusing on meeting people through my interests in art and writing, in the thread of what critic Dave Hickey said, “Beauty is what we like, whether we should or not, what we respond to involuntarily. So beauty is not the product of communities. It creates communities.” At first, I imagined these events would spur immediate easy conversation, only to discover that they were still normal social situations where people came in groups and I came alone. Despite my drive to expand my circles, despite shared interests, I couldn’t help but feel immense discomfort when striking up conversations with strangers.
Before the conversation can even begin, there’s the entire mental preparation of it all. Without fail, I feel my palms moisten as my heart rate accelerates, a body ready for a fight with a tiger except the fight is just trying to say “hey, how’s it going,” to a person that isn’t even faintly intimidating. My internal monologue runs two tracks: one simulating the ways that I’ll make a fool of myself and this stranger will deride me for even considering that I’m worth speaking to them (despite their kind face), the other reminiscent of an affirmations tape, whispering bromides to myself like “nothing changes if nothing changes” or “you must take the first step.”
At this point, I would talk to the stranger or I wouldn’t. There have been countless times that I’ve gone through this mental journey, and most of them have led to me staying quiet and simply observing, while internally castigating myself for giving into my own fears (”fear is the mind killer,” I add to my list of affirmations).
But at some point, I started to actually start conversations some of the time, built off of my enthusiasm for the events that I’d come to. My simulations never came true and no one was disgusted by my attempts to talk to them, even if they wouldn’t always engage in a conversation. With each attempt, the fear diminished a little bit, especially when I spoke to one stranger at a poetry event who had also come alone; she told me that she had hoped that someone would talk to her or that she could’ve built up the courage to talk to someone. It was a relief to remember that there were others like me, hoping to meet others and not simply let strangers stay strangers.
I wish I could tell you that afterwards, these events led to rich, life-changing friendships that have led me to unbelievable levels of joy and splendor, but I pride myself on my honesty. Often after these events where I met new, interesting people, and getting their contact info or their Instagram handles, I found myself staring at my phone, hoping to get notifications that they’d followed me back or that they might want to start or continue a conversation with me. Another devious internal monologue began as I rode the high of my accomplishment of talking to new people at all.
“Did they not realize the wealth of beauty and experience that lurks within me, simply awaiting their attention to extract it? Was I so wicked and distasteful that I’m not worth beginning a text conversation with? Did my short first impression not inspire a move to action to immediately beg for my affections? Was I so egoistical that I thought that a single interaction at an event related to a similar affinity for words or art or music would be enough to create a friendship?”
I felt humbled, I felt stupid. Both were fair. It turns out that people are busy, it turns out that not every short meeting turns into anything bigger. Not immediately of course. But the city is so small and I see them again. And when I see them again, at other events, at random restaurants, at street lights in the neighborhood, there’s familiarity. They’re no longer strangers and even if they’re not yet friends, the city by the bay glows with more and more people that I know. A crowd of random faces is more likely to be familiar. And I feel like I belong, just a little bit more.
We must do what we can to push back against the genocide in Gaza. Consider calling your US representatives to support de-escalation and a ceasefire, donating to Care for Gaza, a grassroots organization delivering food to Palestinians, or buying e-SIMs to keep folks connected to their families.
💧 Drops of the Week 💧
EP - Dog Dreams by Lucy Liyou - really interesting ambient project!
POEM - “Piano” by Edgar Kunz - He was like tissue paper / coming apart in water.