"Loneliness has followed me my whole life. Everywhere. In bars, cars, sidewalks, stores. Everywhere. There's no escape. I'm God's lonely man."
Travis Bickle from "Taxi Driver"


Today I discovered why I am so obsessed with these words. On first glance they seem like a dead-end statement--an exclamation of a hopeless condition. But upon further glance (and this is something that I just did today for the first time--even though these words echo in my mind almost daily, like a prayer to the devoutly religous) you see the self deception evident in the meaning of this loneliness. The four places he mentions for "everywhere" are public places where only adults are permitted (or accepted) to be alone. You never see children alone in bars, cars, sidewalks or stores. The severity of them being alone in any of those places begins with the most absurd (a kid alone in a bar) and ends with the almost-plausible (a kid alone in a store). Loneliness can not be a lifelong condition in any of the four places as a child. Your parents must have accompanied you. Being alone (the precursor to loneliness) began at 8 in stores, 11 on sidewalks, 16 in cars, and 21 in bars. Thus it cannot be a lifelong condition. The hopelessness and degree of loneliness makes it feel that way. Perhaps the reason this quote echoes in my mind is because there is some hope in overstating the condition. Blanketing over all past experience subconciously reminds me that it wasn't always so. I was once never lonely.