The Phantom of Loneliness

Alrighty, so I wrote this paper for my Essay course. We kind of had the freedom to do what we wanted with some topics she gave us. I'm pretty proud of this, even if it is a little depressing, only because I FINALLY found a way to incorporate legit amounts of music into my writing. Anyways, I know it's a bit lengthy, but do enjoy. And thank you for reading!

The Phantom will Grip You

“Where do all the lonely people come from?” –The Beatles (Eleanor Rigby)

Nobody warned him about this pain or how it sometimes feels like he is looking at his life from the bottom of a deep well. Where did this dark phantom come sweeping out from?  How could one person knock the wind out of the very core of his being? Why does one human get to hold so much power? He can’t fight it, so he gives in for just a minute.  He becomes one of the many walking souls in search of something…of anything, to define a more profound purpose in life.

“Loneliness cries deep from my soul, keeps trying to tell me about the world growing so cold”

—Grand Funk Railroad (Loneliness)

All of the sudden a cold feeling grips his heart and tears through his stomach. His head hurts from the thoughts of why he is alone.  Then he starts to rationalize. He deserves to be alone, right? After all, he’s not that attractive or smart or funny.  He calms down again. Now that he has a full understanding of himself, well, it’s okay to be alone now. He can find a little solace in knowing that he should be alone. In fact, he almost deserves to be alone. He just needs to find out how to handle that now.  

“Please be lonely without me”—Quietdrive (Starbright)

Then comes the anger—the child of loneliness. While anger is a product of loneliness, it can often be found that loneliness is born of heartache.  He drops to his knees with tears in his eyes and decides to wish loneliness upon the one who has left him.  He figures if he wished loneliness upon her, then he wouldn’t be alone in the world.  If loneliness was going to sit holding him in the palm of its hand, well he wasn’t going to be alone in that.  He wanted loneliness’ hands tightly wound around the waist of the heartbreaker—the one person he trusted, because loneliness hurts.  He was unspeakably fearful that he was alone in his feelings of loneliness. Those are intense layers of emotion that the phantom is just relishing over.  It’s the pinnacle of pain. The world is starting to seem pretty grim, and all of the sudden he sees this pool beneath him. He looks up at that sneering phantom, laughing so gleefully at how far he has fallen.  “What is that black liquid? What are you going to do to me now?”  The phantom looked him over, up and down, with a pondering look in his eye.  “Ah, you see, it is not what I will do to you. For it is your choices, kind sir, and your will to survive, that determine whether that pool is for you to swim in. As I grow bigger, your time grows smaller.  You must figure out how you will spend your time, and you must decide soon. That is all I shall say, for I do delight in your company.”  

“So when your hope’s on fire/but you know your desire/don’t hold a glass over the flame/don’t let your heart grow cold” –Mumford and Sons (Hopeless Wanderer)

He finds himself looking beyond his heartache, to the things around him that don’t remind him of her.  He turns to the people who love him and remembers the feeling of laughter.  To his surprise, people want to listen when he’s sad, because they care.  He refocuses his dreams and pushes past the feelings of self-doubt.  He recognizes that he actually has a pretty damn charming sense of humor and cleans up well.  He isn’t ready to close his heart or let it grow cold; he’s still chasing passion and no phantom of loneliness will hold him down.  He might be haunted in the wee hours of nighttime by his past, and that may ache sometimes, but there is no way he would let himself drown in a pool of depression.  He finds himself pretty clever and, as it turns out, being alone isn’t so bad after all. He goes where he wants without having to report back to anyone, and he can get lost in his mind for hours without being questioned about what he’s thinking about. So, yes, though loneliness may try to sweep in from time-to-time, there was no way it would win.

“But what if I do win? You know what happened to the last guy? It was such a sad song to sing, but I loved his company dearly too.” Said the phantom, “Oh, yes. He got a glimmer of hope in his eye, much like you have. His wasn’t quite as strong though, so I grew just a little bit bigger and held a little bit tighter, and I won.”

“We all have these things inside that no one else can see, they hold us down like anchors; they drown us out at sea.”—Bring Me the Horizon (Chelsea Smile)

The phantom saw him. He thought back only a few months and remembered that man. Loneliness had swiftly risen after his father had passed away. He grasped for hope and happiness. He looked for it in bottles and pipes, but to no avail. He couldn’t find it in the arms of women he barely knew nor could he find solace in his one sibling, who he had grown apart from as an adult. His parents had divorced when he was a teenager—he grew close to his father, while his sister took to his mother. The family was estranged, and now he felt abandoned. So, as loneliness grew the man decided to fall into the pool and was slowly drowning every day. Soon he would grab for the rope; but let us not speak of the rope for at that point many are beyond repair.

“This is for the ones who stand, for the ones who try again, for the ones who need a hand, for the ones that think they can.” –Greg Laswell (It Comes and Goes [In Waves])

And so you see, loneliness took two men in drastically different directions.  Through his heartache and pain, the first man found his way out through hope.  He realized that there was more to life than a relationship, even when a broken heart can leave your chest heaving deeply and tears flow for hours.  It often feels as if nobody can identify with such strong emotions, but this man found that he could rise from the ashes of pain and rebuild himself. The other man was not so lucky.  Loneliness grew so daunting that he fell into a pool of depression that anchored his emotions to a point of no return.  Recognize this; the world is not black and white.  There are not just two paths where loneliness can take a man, for he loves to stretch the pain, leave and come back, and can resurface at any point in life.  Loneliness is a constant threat, but should not be a constant fear.