By Toyin Falola

 

The Geography of Loneliness

Loneliness is not an empty room.

It is a room

where someone once lived

and every object still remembers.

The cup remembers the mouth.

The pillow remembers the head.

The doorway remembers footsteps.

Only the living are commanded to forget.

At midnight,

the house begins its interrogation.

Where are they?

The clock asks.

Where are they?

The empty chair asks.

Where are they?

The photograph asks

with the terrible innocence

of a face

that does not know it has become history.

You offer no answer.

What answer can the abandoned give

to furniture?

Outside, the world continues

its vulgar celebration.

Cars pass.

Lovers return home.

Someone is laughing

behind another wall.

Somewhere a telephone rings

and someone answers:

Hello.

Such a small word.

Such an unbearable miracle.

Your own telephone

lies beside you

like a stone taken from a graveyard.

Silent.

You check it anyway.

Nothing.

You check again.

Nothing.

Even machines

can teach a human being

the meaning of rejection.

There was a time

when your name lived

inside other people’s mouths.

They called you.

They needed you.

They waited for you.

Now your name has become

an abandoned house

at the edge of memory.

Grass grows through its windows.

Dust occupies the rooms.

No one comes.

And the dead—

Ah, the dead are cruel companions.

They return whenever they wish.

A mother’s voice

from forty years ago.

A father’s hand.

A friend’s laughter.

A beloved walking away

without knowing

that memory would preserve

the exact angle of the departure.

The dead do not knock.

They enter.

They sit beside your bed.

They ask no permission.

Sometimes you wake certain

that someone called your name.

You listen.

Nothing.

Only the refrigerator humming.

Only pipes inside the walls.

Only darkness

breathing its enormous breath.

And you realize:

There are graves

that require no cemetery.

There are funerals

that happen inside the body.

There are people

we bury beneath the ribs

and carry everywhere.

No priest comes.

No drummer announces the death.

No mourner brings flowers.

The heart simply closes another room.

And locks it.

Loneliness knows these rooms.

It has the keys.

It enters at three in the morning

wearing the faces of everyone who left.

It sits on your chest.

It whispers:

Remember?

And you remember.

God,

you remember.

Every betrayal.

Every departure.

Every message unanswered.

Every promise

that died quietly

without even the dignity

of becoming a lie.

You remember those

who said,

I will always be here.

Always.

What a dangerous word.

Perhaps the loneliest places

are built from promises.

Perhaps every forever

contains a hidden cemetery.

Morning eventually comes,

but morning is not salvation.

Light merely reveals

what darkness had concealed:

the second cup that no one uses,

the untouched chair,

the coat

that should have been removed

years ago,

The photograph

you keep turning facedown

and turning upright again.

You stand before the mirror.

For several seconds

the person staring back

looks unfamiliar.

Older.

Quieter.

Almost transparent.

You wonder when

you began disappearing.

Perhaps disappearance

does not happen suddenly.

Perhaps we vanish

one unanswered greeting at a time,

one forgotten birthday,

one empty Sunday,

one Christmas chair,

one funeral,

one departure,

one silence

after another.

Until one evening

you understand something

no human being should understand:

The world can continue perfectly well

without noticing that your heart

has become a ruined city.

And still it beats.

That is the horror.

It beats.

After everyone leaves.

After love withdraws its furniture.

After friendship changes its address.

After death collects

the voices you depended upon.

Still—

the stubborn thing beats.

Alone.

Alone.

Alone.

Like someone knocking

from inside a coffin,

certain that somewhere

above the earth,

someone must hear.

But the night is enormous.

And nobody comes.

Every day, you wake before the alarm sounds. It has become a ritual for a while now. You set the alarm every night even when you know you are most likely to wake up before it rings. Your consistency is not because you fear you would oversleep but of the consequences that comes with waking late. This has been your routine since you moved to Lagos. The city in its ways has taught you the importance of time and now you know better how sacred each stroke of the clock is. An extra minute wrapped under the blanket on the bed could alter the flow of your morning. An extra minute in bed could translate into another hour in traffic.

As you lay in bed to regain full consciousness, you look at your phone by the bed side. As usual, it was awake with notifications. Some urgent, others routine. A quick scroll shows unreplied chats on the family WhatsApp group, your class group from the university, amongst others. You scrolled until you settled on the group for work. You opened reluctantly as you read through. The chats were few. A colleague wanted a report for the 9 a.m. meeting. Another wants to know if you will be free for a session during break. You sighed wearily. “When does it end?” you say as you walk down to the bathroom. Before leaving the house, you had already responded to several people as you locked your door, marching into the world for the day’s work.

The atmosphere outside was a bit chilly. It was just November and you could feel the dryness and chill that signals harmattan. You walked down the road, taking on the usual noise of the city. Commuters of all categories were on the road. One might have thought you were late for an outing. However, this is Lagos, the roads are never empty.  You missed as you made a futile effort to remember what life was before now; you gave up immediately you thought about it. You joined the thousands moving on both ends to various destinations. No one stopped for pleasantries. It was how the city operated. No padi for Lagos.

At work, you move between meetings, emails and conversations that rarely last beyond a minute. During break, you casually walked through the cubicles into the hall, occasionally returning smiles and waves to familiar faces. You passed through the office common room. You felt nostalgic as you remembered the last time a surprise birthday party was thrown for you in the same room. You were surprised at the gift choices and personal information the people you worked with had gathered about you over time. Perhaps it was the office gossip. Deep down, you knew better to blindly acknowledge every act of kindness thrown your way at work. You knew of the unspoken rule. People only do for you what they expect you to do for them. It was all transactional. If anyone looked at your life from a distance, they would probably describe you as someone surrounded by people. Afterall, people seem to flock around you at the office.

At the end of the day’s work, you packed up and made your way to the bus stop. It was yet another time for another long journey home through traffic. At home, you settled for something from the refrigerator as you were too tired to prepare a cooked meal. There is silence all around, but you have become used to it. You settle on the couch after a quick shower, tune on the TV as you have always done every night. The sound from the sets makes the room feel less empty.

Without thinking, you reach for your phone. A quick scroll takes you through photographs from past events. There were shots from wedding parties, holidays and office promotions. One particular picture caught your attention. It was one from a hangout just after NYSC. You looked at it fondly. The smiles and laughter were genuine. Someone had a funny face you could not remember what for. You however remember the event. It was the last gathering before you all dispersed; someone was celebrating a new job. A notification from your messenger app popped up. You check instinctively. Someone had just posted pictures from a weekend getaway. It was a familiar face. You liked without purpose and continued until you realize you have spent an hour looking into other people’s lives without feeling connected to a single one of them.

You realized what you feel, describing what loneliness is. It creeps in slowly and does not start when people leave your life. It starts when your conversations and thoughts no longer carry the meanings you expected. It is possible to be around many people and still feel distant. You remember how many times you had joined or joked or laughed at one in the office for courtesy. You did not want to be left out or perceived to be rude. You cannot remember when last someone noticed your smile was only being polite. The responses on the groups had always been more a sense of duty than genuine connection. You would have given anything at that moment for a real conversation. Your flat mate would just be arriving from work too. It was not a good time for a chit chat.

As you sit there, you realize, it has been a while since someone genuinely checked in on you with intent. You equally feel guilty as you also have not checked after anyone too. You have become so used to the casual brush ups and the default responses. Any conversation that lasted a few minutes was a soft landing for another request or assistance. You longed for those times when someone could read the room and notice how your silence had become heavier than your words.

You feel lonely. Your schedule has made relationships difficult. You have been in about two in the past year with nothing to show. It was either you were too busy to match the energy or the other had something on their table too. Both parties could genuinely not sustain it.

The strange thing about being lonely is that it is easily disguised. It can be masked conveniently behind productivity and carefully managed routines. The stacked-up responsibilities and obligations make you think you belong to a community and that because people can reach you at any moment, they must also know you. Yet, you long for that connection genuinely. Your phone may ring all day, but that part of you still carries disappointment and exhaustion.

Sometimes you long to hear a familiar voice. But you do not call. You only scroll through contacts, name after name until you quietly put the phone away. You stopped yourself from reaching out because you believe everyone is busy. You decide to try tomorrow until the day comes and you are bugged down with the same routine all day long.

This is perhaps one of the quiet ironies of our generation. We have learnt to stay connected with many while remaining in the distance at the same time. Despite the access, many of us struggle to feel connected to others. Technology has made access easier. It is easier now to tell what others are up to and what phase of life they are in. We can say things about their job, relationships and life challenges. However, beyond that, we often share no connections with them. We often have no idea what sorrow they carry behind the camera.

Maybe you have felt it too. Maybe you have sat in the middle of a celebration and wondered why you still felt alone. Maybe you have spent an entire day talking without feeling heard. Maybe the busiest parts of your life have become the loneliest. If so, you are not odd. You are not weak. You are experiencing what most people are unwilling to admit.

In truth, loneliness is beyond the likes and shares. It goes beyond how many people know you or have your contacts saved. It can only be rightly measured by how many of these contacts truly know who you are at the end of the conversations, after the photographs are posted and after the world has stopped asking for your attention. The present generation has spent so much hoping people will notice when they arrive. Yet for many, our deeper longing is far quieter than that. What many secretly long for is simply that someone notices when we begin to disappear, even in the crowd.