Being Alone

On a beach on Lake Superior, trying to make sense of anything, Anna said, “Maybe we just didn’t love each other enough.” Waves slapped the shoreline. It made me question myself and still does, almost three years later. Among other things you might say about love, you might say that losing someone makes you self-aware. You might say losing someone makes you conscious of your aloneness.

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As writer, we list and catalogue our reasons for writing. People write about why they write as though writing is an anthropological thing, a culture to be studied and scrutinized. Why do I do it?

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A grad school professor of mine once said that all poetry is love poetry. All poetry, I’d concede, and maybe all writing.

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Sophie Rosenblum has called me a Twitter maniac. I’m on Twitter so much, it’s true. I’m always writing thoughts, jokes. I make attempts at connection, promotion, community. I’m always writing to people. It is promotion and being a voice for my work and for the magazine I run, Sundog Lit. But it’s also a reaching out and hoping for the reaching back.

You have to be active in social media, I tell folks. You have to put yourself out there and shout your name for people to hear you.

But maybe it’s not true, maybe you don’t have to be visible for folks to find you, to find your work and read.

Maybe all you need to do is write. And if the work is great enough, the work will find its way.

But there are so many voices, so much that’s hard to pick one out from the stentorian roar.

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Part of what hurts in the aftermath of losing someone is the realization that there are blemishes and wounds, things to be bandaged.

Post-Anna, I tried so hard to find someone to clean those wounds, to wipe away the dirt and grime. We want that wholeness back, the kind gleamed from togetherness.

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Part of the aloneness comes with feeling that one didn’t do something right, that one could go back and change things and be better and never lose what was lost.

Much of an author’s social media presence is that way. Am I doing anything right? If I’m not, how do I know? I have a presence on Twitter, one that is sometimes reflective, sometimes vulnerable, often trying to be funny. A presence that asks for conversation.

And, that’s it: part of what makes social media presence successful is the same thing that makes attempts to find togetherness in real life successful. It’s engaging in conversation. It’s not simply shouting into the void. It’s not, Hey, I’m right here! Listen, listen, hear me! Sure, we’re on Twitter or Facebook to promote our work, to put ourselves out there in hopes that someone will read that work. But, it’s also hope that they’ll pause on a sentence or image, that they’ll feel connected to a character, that, ultimately, they’ll feel togetherness.

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When I returned to Omaha for the only job I found after graduating with my MFA, I felt returned to a place that was no longer really home. I felt separated from all the people and places I really loved, from Lake Superior. Part of what helped me not feel so isolated was Twitter, talking to folks, meeting people who I came to respect, people I had not met. After Anna, I reached and grasped for anyone, for a connection.

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I’m on Twitter a lot – promoting my writing and promoting Sundog. But, it’s when I’m merely hollering that I feel the least successful, when I feel disconnected. It’s when I say, here, read this, and this, and this. Twitter is most successful when I’m reaching out, engaging folks in 140 characters, when I’m writing them back, establishing connection and community.

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Maybe producing great writing will help a writer find what they’re looking for, but I don’t believe it. I think you have to ask for connection and you have to give reasons for others to respond. You have to be out there, and not everything’s going to work, and much of it won’t, but you have to reach and grasp and shout, and hope that voice will be heard.