The Economics of My Loneliness
I think the creators of the universe withheld the gift of mathematics competency because they know I'd be too powerful. Neither abacus nor graphing calculator can save me from the heart palpitations remixed with my panicked breath as I try to calculate tips and decipher military time. I know you move a decimal and there's something with adding or multiplying 12? I think...
Despite my concerning quantitative GRE score, I find myself uniquely talented; I am an economics connoisseur. You see, I am an expert in the economics of my loneliness. I've identified the variables and can translate their worth into costs and differing values; they reflect the pieces of myself that are bartered, traded, and commodified on the market.
I learned to stretch my warmth around loved ones and draw from the well of my compassion. Over time, I perfected the art of shrinking myself, sidestepping my hurt, and fine-tuning the echoes of silence to make way for lovers' egos and familial obligations. One-sided intimacy left my arms heavy from holding space for others. I thought I was too big, too smart, too needy, too sensitive, too emotional ... too much.
The variables took different forms in petulant coworkers, smiling frenemies, emotional usurers, and steely animations of intergenerational trauma. Yet the outcome of problem set looked the same. Each transactional relationship meant giving the best parts of me away for fleeting company and unpaid invoices for emotional labor.
Undeterred by my initial ineptitude, I began to understand the economics of this loneliness - the unnerving ability to calculate how much of me I would lose, how to multiply these patterns in new friendships, perfecting the ways I'll need to subtract my voice to make room for yours. It took the most practice averaging out how long it will take to minimize my feelings and needs so that you may heal.
Despite my growing talent for these transactions and following regulations, I still struggle with calculating where and when my emotional gymnastics stops so that there may be space in this relationship for me.
This loneliness knows no limits and I no longer take pride in this talent. No textbook or economics module has taught me, yet, on how to expand myself. How to charge the right price for my labor and calculate the appropriate tax. I'm still lost on balancing this checkbook and knowing when to pull out of bad investments - to reinvest in myself.
I am hard pressed to find this guiding text, the one that will provide answers and economic strategies on how to turn this connoisseur into a mogul. And so I turn inward, with new questions on the person I no longer want to be.
A woman who can perform this magic of giving, even when the well runs dry.
