It hurts the most after spurts of laughter. For instance: I was recently working out in my apartment and heard the Free Willy theme song. Naturally, I started singing because somehow I knew the entire Free Willy Theme song, and by the end of it I was raising my hands and singing (Throwback 90s Praise Band Style) in between reps of bicep curls. By the time I was doing tricep kickbacks, I could barely sing the words because of the lump in my throat created by the memory of how the kid saved the whale and the whale saved the kid. When I suddenly realized how ridiculous and hilarious the whole thing looked—the singing, the raised hands, the lump in my throat and the Free Willy Theme Song—I started laughing hysterically. By the time I got to shoulder presses, the sharp pain of loneliness set in: another moment gone unwitnessed.
Sometimes I feel it when I arrive at my destination after a long road trip. I pick up my phone with an urge to text Someone that I got where I was going, and it occurs to me that no one knew I left. Sure, some friends knew I’d be out of pocket at some point, but they didn’t know when I was leaving or when I’d be back. They weren’t aware of my existence in real time and space. Sometimes I turn to social media to let The World know I made it somewhere they didn’t know I was going—to let them know I still exist—and the “likes” calm the subconscious fear for a moment. Of course I call and text friends to talk of my excursions and hear about theirs, but that’s what’s disconcerting: I increasingly find myself telling them about my life rather than sharing it with them.
This post comes to you from someone who’s actually really happy. I’ve been blessed with amazing friends, a church I love, a job I’m passionate about, and endless opportunities to go on adventures that bring me to life. I’m blessed with good health and the perspective to see something hilarious every 12 minutes. I feel it in the best times though: the tug that it’s not good to be alone.
While I see people throughout my days, I find myself bouncing from circle to circle with very little overlap between the different groups. I find myself showing up at pre-set times and telling folks about the life I lived since we last spoke, about the moments that went unwitnessed. It meets the need, makes me happy, and keeps me from feeling totally lonely, but something still feels off. Something feels off because telling people about the moments that make up my life is very different than sharing the moments with them, and there’s no one to share in the moments.
It’s not just my life that I want witnessed though: I want to know the quirky little details of someone else’s life as well. Sometimes I catch myself imagining my friends’ morning routines because I’m just curious as to how their days are actually spent. I’ll wonder whether they make coffee first thing in the morning (a french press?), or turn music on and dance (which playlist?), or sing in their cars or cuss in traffic. It’s those everyday moments of nothingness that make up our lives, the time in between the times when we catch up with each other to talk about all that transpired.
What I’ve longed for more than anything is a shared history with someone, where (together) we recount the way this place or those people or that near-death experience shaped us into the people we are today. There is no shared history, though, because the places and people and near-death experiences were things I arrived at alone and left alone. Then I moved into another space where I would tell other people about those experiences, grasping for the adjectives to capture it as accurately as possible so they might come a little closer to understanding who I am and where I’ve been. But they don’t really know.
We spend a lot of time talking about “community”, but if we’re going to avoid leading lives that go unwitnessed then we need to think practically and realistically. What most of us are longing for is a lifelong commitment to sharing a home with someone else—we’re longing for family. When I say “us”, I’m referring to most humans everywhere, not simply gay people. We see it in the gay community too, because gay people are a subset of human people, but we’re all longing for it. Since this is a holy human longing, and it’s not good for man to be alone, and Christians are concerned about the ways both gay people are going about fulfilling this legitimate human longing, then we need to expand our understanding of the ways this can be lived out.
Whether it’s an intentional community, best friends who make a covenant, families that open their homes to friends for a lifetime, or even a close-knit neighborhood where folks commit to one another and have open door policies: we need an avenue for intimacy in shared households. We need to be family. Christians continue to be surprised when gay people partner off with one another or pursue marriage, but we’ve yet to offer any sort of practical path for them to find family. Folks still think the answer is to schedule a dinner sometime a few weeks from now. There are rumblings of a fresh perspective here and there, and I’m hopeful many will move from the imagination to action, but it’s yet to materialize. If a positive alternative doesn’t pan out practically, we will have a generation of young people who feel they’re choosing between a shift in their understanding of marriage or leading lives that go unwitnessed.
Julie Rodgers shares life with inner city youth in West Dallas. She also writes and speaks about faith and sexuality, so check out her blog or find her on Twitter:@Julie_rodgers.
