Reflection: We Do What We Do In The Dark (2022) by Michelle Hart
On aloneness and loneliness
Less than an hour into the book, I posted this snippet on my Instagram story:
Mallory moved to sit on the bed but the woman stopped her.
“Clothes outside the home carried germs,” the woman said.
I have never related to a character (the woman) so much, I joked, that as a simple person, that makes this book an instant contender for a 4+ star rating. When I finished the book, however, I seriously considered re-reading it, but I returned it to the library instead and added it to my digital bookshelf with a 5-star rating so I could write this reflection.
It’s a book that makes me want to own a copy of, which only happens when the lines resonate philosophically with me. Here’s one:
“We do what we do in the dark and then we deal with it all alone. That’s how I know you won’t tell anyone about us. If you did, whatever this is would no longer be just yours.”
It’s one of those books where “nothing happens,” so it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. The book is like those European art films where… nothing happens. At least, mainstream cinemagoers would complain about them that way. And yet those films continue to preoccupy your mind (mine, at least) for days and weeks after, even years later. For people who drink from the Hollywood firehose, it is unbearable. There are no car chases, no gun fights, and no explosions to scratch the hedonistic itch; a waste of time for many who live for the rush, who turn to media as a form of escapism.
No, this book makes you confront your existence instead. To exist, one must be known to others. What happens if nobody really does? The book feels like an endeavour to embody loneliness, even the writing feels aptly detached and unspirited. (You would call it “flat,” if it’s not your cup of tea). A fitting description of any attempt to represent loneliness is that it’s like “trying to explain a dream or a joke,” which is another resonating phrase from the book. Here’s another:
“You know when you are sitting by yourself on the train and someone walks by, and even though there aren’t many seats free, the person doesn’t sit with you? You are relieved that you have the space to yourself, but also, you think, ‘Why didn't this person want to sit with me?’ I don’t think that ever goes away.”
One of the most quoted lines in online reviews, though, is this: “I’m afraid of being alone and afraid that is the only way I know how to be.” And yet, that’s probably the one I relate to the least. I’m not afraid of being alone; I like my solitude, and I am indifferent to loneliness.
At some point in my early adulthood, sometime just after graduating and moving to a big city, I came to a realisation: I spent too much time in childhood and adolescence hiding who I am that I pushed people away as soon as they got too close, for fear that they would find out the secrets of who I really am—a queer, non-believing progressive—that I missed out on making real friends. Everyone found a best friend and a friend group, and I just hovered and floated where I needed to be to do things I was required to do. In retrospect, it’s better to be alone than to have bigoted friends.
Most people form their life-long friendships in those early years because manufactured social environments compel us to pick friends, and inevitably stick with them: schools (and science projects), churches (and church plays), neighbourhoods (and playground activities), and so on. You even have the opportunity to redo this phase a few times before everyone has been paired up and grouped together for life, for example, if your family moves around a lot, or when you go to a new high school or a university in a different state.
By the time you enter the workforce, you are no longer in these environments that can force you to make friends. Of course, there are group projects at work, and committees to be part of, but you’re not friends; you’re colleagues. It’s professional, and you get paid for it. And after work, away from your family, you just want to spend your remaining time and energy with the companions you already made from those earlier years. Everyone already has friends, and they have enough friends in their little friend group, and no one wants to upset the group dynamic by inviting someone new who may or may not fit in with the rest. And for me, that’s okay. I accept that and I don’t yearn to belong to a friend group, nor do I feel resentment for not being considered for inclusion.
When I read this book, I felt the acceptance—validation, even—of aloneness and loneliness as a way of existence. Before I go on, I don’t want people to feel sorry for me. I must insist that by the principles of Buddhism (or Stoicism, if that’s more familiar to you) of detachment, temperance, and mindfulness, this state of being is not suffering. Of course, that is not a statement of absolute. It could be a miserable, desolate life if your values and philosophy are the opposite of mine, but I am not imposing my principles on you.
“When you are constantly told you’re different, sometimes all you want to do is go off and be different. Marriage is boring. He jokes now about how much he misses being oppressed. How thrilling it felt when a relationship with another man was taboo. He said this so often that I don’t actually think he’s joking.”
“Honestly, I sort of understand what he means. Don’t you?”
“Of course. There’s no better sex than the kind no one knows you’re having.”
As an adult without any secrets anymore, connecting with people is not difficult. Like the main character in the book, I have built robust relationships with others, but also fleeting ones, and completely life-altering ones as well. And many are a little bit like little secrets between each individual and me. And after our paths crossed, they usually would diverge at some point. Sometimes they never converge again, but other times they do. The aforementioned Buddhist/Stoic virtues are valuable in facing such uncertainty, impermanence, and loss. Significantly for me, it’s often just a singular line that crosses with mine, and rarely a whole bunch of lines at the same time.
So sometimes, I think about them, individually: the friend for a season, the friend for a reason, the friend from work who is no longer a friend because we both found other jobs elsewhere now so we probably never really had anything else in common, the friend an ocean apart with our timezone difference a convenient excuse for the declining rate of correspondence, the friend a decade apart with our occasional inter-generational misunderstanding, the friend who became a fling, the fling who became a friend, the fling-friend who became a stranger, the fling-friend who could have been but the stars were never properly aligned.
And then, I think about what happens to them at my funeral if I die. First, I don’t think many will show up, because I don’t think anyone knows of each other’s existence in my life to be letting one another know of my demise. Second, if somehow everyone does find out, I don’t think many feel like they know me enough to show up. Third, if somehow everyone does show up, I wonder if they will start talking to each other, and then question if they had shown up at a stranger’s funeral because they would probably be talking about very different versions of me. I find this thought extremely stressful, but I’m glad I would be dead by then to be upset by it.
The reality is that I treat these transitional companionships as confidential affairs where I deposit small but distinct secrets just to make the relationship feel a little bit more special to me. I know they have stronger, longer, better friendships to return to when this one runs its course. I suppose when you’ve been constrained by big secrets that prevented you from being authentic for most of your younger years, these small secrets act as an emotional support pillow to help form genuine relationships later in life.
But if these individuals whom I kept apart from one another congregate, they will have the opportunity to piece together the stories—the little secrets—and actualise my being. This thought troubles me, not because I have any real secrets, but because I just want to be alone and forgotten instead of being perceived into a complete and perpetual existence through their memories.
I wonder if people with large, overlapping, messy, complex web of a social life contemplate such things about themselves too.
Strolling alone through the gallery, she was moved, remembering that art was something created in hiding that was meant to be found by others.
TL;DR: Not a lot of obvious things happen, not in a descriptive, explicit way. But a lot of things happen, mainly in the reader’s mind (mine).