Irrelevant

You know how sometimes you're reading a book, and something the author has written screams out at you, just hits you right between the eyes? That doesn't happen to me often, but it did yesterday. I'm reading "The Feast of Love" by Charles Baxter, a novel about an author who is writing a book about people's love stories, and he interviews his friends and his friend's friends. I picked it up a few years ago, and am just now getting around to reading it. It seemed like a sweet, innocuous choice after reading (1) a book about an abused child who makes up a sibling, and, before that one, (2) the Most Convoluted Book Ever Written. Anyway, the main character is interviewing his recently dumped/divorced friend, Bradley, who said this:

"You look up from reading the newspaper and realize that no one loves you, and no one burns for you. The workings of nature are mysterious, but they do account for a certain amount of despair among single persons, the irrelevance you sometimes feel."

That struck me because I feel that way every once in a while. I'll just be sitting there doing something, and I'll suddenly think, "No one is thinking of me. No one is wondering what I'm doing right now." Now, I'm not feeling sorry for myself; it's just a bit jarring. I don't know if it's because this is the first time since my junior year of high school that I haven't had a "significant other", and the whole "single" thing is still really new to me. And I know it shouldn't be that way, but it's a bit distressing.

I know I have other things to focus on, and I'm really not worried about finding a guy right now--either I'll find someone eventually, or I'll become the local Crazy Cat Lady--but I know how Bradley feels. To some extent, irrelevant.