Briana Confronts Loneliness

Tapping Personal Appreciation

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Fascinated by the preciseness of his animated fingers, Briana stuck her own hand out in front of her and tried to mimic his gestures in the shadows of the theater. But Briana only saw a limp hand with crooked fingers that didn't obey her command to replicate the subtlety of the man's silent expression.

Briana had first noticed him when he sat down with a female companion four rows ahead of her in the theater. All Briana could see was the profile of his face and his hand that popped up periodically.

The fellow theater attendee checked the time on his watch. Yes, 15 minutes until curtain time, Briana confirmed, glancing at her own watch.

Pretending not to stare at him, Briana tried to focus on the people coming into the theater. But -- again -- his animated hand, gracefully accenting the conversation he was having with his companion, drew Briana 's attention.

He had long, slender fingers -- those of a conductor or a pianist. His wrist first pivoted clockwise and then counterclockwise. His fingers punctuated the black backdrop of the stage with an array of patterns, which had a rhythm all their own.

Trying to pivot her own wrist and form her thumb and fingers into a crown like the man had just formed, Briana only produced a tentative movement, which grew even more grotesque after her fourth attempt. Briana finally closed her hand and stuck it into her suit pocket.

As couples and foursomes started filing into the theater, the combined chatter of a Saturday-night-out grew louder. Two couples quickly filled the row where Briana was sitting and began to tease one another about last Friday night's party.

But Briana was still focused on her supposed pianist four rows ahead of her. His forefinger momentarily came to rest on his temple. He looked back in Briana's direction, and Briana could see love in his eyes. It also graced his fingertips, as they again happily pierced the darkness under the soft spotlight from the ceiling.

Briana felt hollow in her chest. At 23, she was still going through the self-doubts normally experienced by a 13-year-old. Why is it so difficult, she lamented, to love and be loved when you don't conform with what the current culture considers the norm – when childhood polio has rendered your hands so unresponsive?

You may marry someday, Briana 's mother had always told her. "But whoever you marry will have to be someone very special, and he's going to have to love you very much," she would say.

She wouldn't say it, but Briana knew what she meant. It would have to be someone who didn't mind her disability.

Briana was more idealistic than that. True -- Briana was not nimble physically, but what counted was the kind of person she was and whether her spirit, values and interests had a good match with her partner. That match was the essential element of a relationship. Preferences. Possibilities. To Briana, both were passports to happiness.

Yet, she did not hear that approach to relationships reaffirmed in the Midwest during the early 1960s.

Briana remembers a conservative Lutheran pastor, a close family friend, fuming about his daughter's decision to marry a man who used a wheelchair. "It was her choice," he would say under his breath, "to marry a cripple. But, apparently, they're happy."

Briana was amused whenever he would repeat his sentiments about his daughter's marriage. He was genuine in his surprise that they may be happy together -- that they would prefer each other and find the other attractive, charming, and fascinating.

The theater's lights gradually grew dimmer, and the curtain parted on stage, revealing the string quartet from Julliard.

Amid the applause of the audience, the woman closest to Briana in her row eyed the empty seat between them.

"Is this taken?" she whispered.

"No," Briana answered sheepishly.

The woman placed her shawl neatly on the seat next to Briana.

Now, more than 50 years later, Briana realizes that loneliness is not experienced only at certain stages in life, such as puberty or elderhood. It is the human condition.

“Loneliness is a sign you are in desperate need of yourself.” - Rupi Kaur

But is it, she asks, too optimistic to expect to outgrow or shrink loneliness? Or, the trick may be to cultivate loneliness when a person experiences it tunneling into his or her soul. Those spaces of loneliness in a person's life could be a time for internal, personal growth – when preferences and possibilities take root.

And she believes an individual needs to never give up hope in finding intelligent, sensitive fellow travelers who will understand and help fill – at least temporarily – those go-it-alone spaces that are a part of life.

Briana's takeaway tip from her story: Tap the periods of loneliness in life as opportunities for growing in personal appreciation.