Loneliness is a mini stroke.

You may be walking along a street, with nary a care in the world, when suddenly, something grabs you from within and you cease breathing. It is at once cold and searing, this white heat that washes over you fast and angry, a spurned lover returned to claim lost virtue. Your center is numb.

And just as suddenly, it releases and you gasp as though emerging from water, your eyes welling up with tears, your knees very nearly buckling. The pain leaves a puncture, and energy seaps out like air from a flat tire. It’s all you can do to remain standing.

And yet, stumbling a little, you continue to walk, because somewhere, somehow, your brain is trying to tell you you’re losing it. But you know better.

You know, that this is what it is. This is your reality. This is Your Life.

When I was living in Singapore many years ago, I remember it as the happiest and yet the loneliest time of my life. I was far away from home, something I’d wanted to be for a long time, partying it up with my friends. And yet, I yearned for love. I longed for intimacy and for tenderness.

It was in Singapore that I’d felt my most unattractive, my ugliest. The women were (and most probably still are) slender while I was pudgy. They were classy and polished, while I smoked and therefore reeked. They were always sharply dressed in the finest brands while I wore a dowdy bank uniform most days and barely had the money to keep up with even pasar malam couture.

I was 60lbs lighter, my skin clearer, nothing sagged. And yet, not in a million years would I’ve been able to find anyone to love me on that little island.

And this is why when I watch something like this, I am deeply saddened, not out of pity but out of experience and empathy because loneliness…well, let’s just say attractive people will never know the true meaning of REAL loneliness. You can talk about the inability to connect with the billions of people already in your life ’til the cows come home but this. This is what real loneliness is.

When you can’t find anyone because nobody is in your life. When you’ve tried and tried, looked long and hard, and yet, nobody looks back. When you look in the mirror and just know that you will never be able to make the connection because there is no Point B. There is no other hand. No one to tango with. No shore. And you start to hate yourself for needing it so much.

This bias for symmetry and aesthetics is so ingrained into the human psyche that it is practically woven into our genetic code; will it ever evolve? And if it does, which will be weaned?