Different kinds of lonely

"Writing a thesis is a lonely obsessive activity. You live inside your head, nowhere else. University libraries are like madhouses, full of people pursuing wraiths, hunches, obsessions. The person with whom you spend most of your time is the person you're writing about." - from Hallucinating Foucault (Patricia Duncker)

That quote is from one of my earliest entries, when I was writing my thesis (duh). I didn't feel it then but boy, do I feel it now. Law School is so many different kinds of lonely. It's the agonizing kind of lonely because technically, you're with scores of other people but each of you is caught up in your own sense of dealing with mediocrity, perfection and absurd (mostly) stories about strangers. Talking about things other than recits and provisions has turned into such a luxury that every time you catch yourself in one of those conversations, you immediately feel guilty.

It's the deafening kind of lonely when you go home and realize that there's just no time to catch up with anyone, not even your family because there are, literally, 670 cases to comb through for one subject and final examinations are in a month.

It's the paranoid kind of lonely, especially when you didn't get to answer a certain question very well. You spend the whole ride home wondering if you managed to scrape by with a 76. And then you compare it with your other recits and in between signalling for turns and turning on your headlights, you are mentally computing for your average.

It's the heartbreaking kind of lonely when, at the end of the day, you just want somebody to drive you home. Somebody who cares. Somebody who will say "Let's talk about something else," instead of "You kind of missed this part of the codal. I really don't know if you passed." (You know, sometimes I just want to be lied to)

I enjoy it, I do. It's just exhausting and so fucking lonely.