How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

by Lane Moore

I know this is why most people who have similarly conflicted relationships with their family members will smooth the paper when they speak of them. They will tell you they’re close with their family, they love them so much, so perfect, so great. And then, just maybe, if you get them alone on a certain day, they’ll tell you they always felt alone, still feel alone, their family wasn’t great. And the very next day they might deny this, to you and everyone else. And if you do this, I want you to know I know why you do it. Particularly if one of your family members was just evil, and the rest were . . . complicated. Because you know there is so much goodness in some of your family members and some days, years, lifetimes, it’s easier to forgive the deep pain they’ve caused you, when you know that humanity and compassion lives within them, and why, FUCKING WHY couldn’t they have shown it to you sooner? And the answer might be that someone else in your family had tied their hands behind their back and they couldn’t. And it will only make you feel worse. Ah, what could’ve been.