Waiting For Someone To Understand You
Kyle Peters
Reporter/editor
“Hide in your shell,” sang Roger Hodgson of Supertramp in 1974, “cause the world is out to bleed you for a ride.”
Going into college, we were always expecting the next step. We saw all the movies and television shows, where parties and friend groups swallowed up every day. No more loneliness, we thought, no more spending nights in bed watching Netflix, I’m going to find my people.
Guess how wrong we all ended up being.
These days, we feel obligated to always look like we’re up to something. Whether it be sharing the people we’re hanging out with, or the places we’ve been. Social media and the fifteen minutes of fame-driven culture has distilled the idea of just having a quiet night. But yet, when you’re in college, the idea that you’re not doing anything can claw at you.
But what happens when you can’t make that next step? What if you wind up alone on most nights, ignoring texts, or better yet not getting any at all?
That alienation can get larger in the month leading up to Valentine’s Day. Especially on a day where celebrating being together with someone is the main goal, looking for a way to not end up alone can get exhausting. It can be exhausting for so many reasons. You can get yourself in a hole that you start to feel alienated by everyone around you. You can start pushing people away unintentionally.
And while some are alright with remaining that way, there’s some that strive for something else. We put ourselves in boundaries, thinking low of ourselves, or not even putting ourselves out there. We look at the way people promote themselves on social media, and see it as fact. And we wonder. Is that how the other half lives? Are we the other half?
In a classic episode of The Simpsons from 1990, 8-year-old Lisa goes through the same problem, deepening into a depression that has her searching for meaning. Being driven to school by her mother Marge, she is given advice to hold in her feelings. “I want you to smile today,” Marge says, remembering the advice her mother told her, “Take all your bad feelings and push them down. All the way down, past your knees, until you’re almost walking on them. And then you’ll fit in, and you’ll be invited to parties, and boys will like you, and happiness will follow.”
We watch as the advice given crashes down, as a smiling Lisa immediately gets taken advantage of by her teachers and classmates. In a second, Marge scoops her daughter back in the car, turning the episode inside out. Going away from her cliche advice, Marge tells her the truth. “Always be yourself,” she says. “You wanna be sad, honey, be sad. We’ll ride it out with you. And when you get finished feeling sad, we’ll still be there.”
And that’s the problem in our society. We don’t accept that it’s alright to have these feelings, that sometimes it’s alright to be alone. We don’t necessarily need to be pushing ourselves into places we can’t handle, and if we’re not right to be out, or right to be in a relationship, we don’t have to be. Chances are, we’re all going through a bit of the same thing. The things we see on social media aren’t necessarily the full story. And in that togetherness, we aren’t alone.
As the Supertramp song goes, “let me show you the nearest signpost, to get your heart back and on the road. If I can help you, if I can help you, if I can help you, just let me know.”
