to be lonely is a habit.

10Jun10

It has been a while, my friends.

Things have not necessarily been busy, but things have been happening, things have been changing, and things are moving in all kinds of directions. All of this changing can throw a girl off her game.

One of these changing things is that my room-mate and best friend Sarah went home for the summer, leaving me lonesome in our small two-bedroom apartment. This drastic change in lifestyle made me aware of the fact that I’ve never lived alone before, and I’ve come to realize that I’m not very good at it. I get lonely.

There is an unfair stigma attached to loneliness, I think. It makes people feel bad for you, but at the same time admitting to those feelings makes you look needy, like you’re asking to be saved from yourself. Admitting to being lonely seems like a surefire way to stay that way.

Now ‘they’ (the experts, of course) are saying that loneliness may in fact be a clinical disorder. There’s a whole article about it in the May issue of ELLE.

Enter “Lonely” by Emily White.

The cover jumped out at me when I first saw it because it is so simple. Mixing black and white with practically any colour is always a good design choice. It’s easy for the eyes to understand. Also, I must admit I liked it so much because it is almost exactly like a cover I re-designed for Lyn Hejinian’s “My Life” as a project for a Contemporary Women Poets class I took back in 2007. The mock up was a pizza box covered in computer paper, but my professor liked it so much that he told me I should have sent it to Hejinian, which I did not. Anyways, it makes me feel nice to know that my design sensibility is fairly solid.

Because I am now an experienced veteran at this whole living alone situation, here is my only tip on how to avoid being lonely:

Do not listen to this song.