The Things We Carry Quietly
Loneliness is not always an empty room,
sometimes it is a crowded café
and a table set for one,
a hot drink held between two hands
while the rest of the world
seems to be getting on with its day.
Two tables over,
a woman has been stirring her coffee
long after the sugar disappeared.
In an hour she has a hospital appointment,
a scan she cannot quite bring herself to name,
because naming things can make them real
and she isn't ready for real just yet.
She told everybody she was fine going alone,
practised the smile that would prove it,
and placed her phone face down on the table
so she wouldn't have to notice
that nobody had messaged.
By the window,
a man reads the same page of a newspaper
for the third time.
His children used to visit on Sundays,
back when Sundays meant extra chairs
and voices filling rooms.
Now weeks pass quietly.
He tells himself they're busy,
that children grow and lives become complicated,
that he quite likes the peace these days.
Still, every time the café door opens,
he looks up.
At another table,
a man sits with both hands around his mug,
holding it a little tighter than necessary.
In an hour he will stand in a courtroom
and strangers will discuss his life
as though it can be reduced to evidence,
questions and decisions.
He hasn't told anybody how frightened he is.
He didn't want to worry them.
So to everybody else in the café,
he is simply a man having coffee.
Near the counter,
a young woman catches her reflection
in the black screen of her phone.
She smooths her clothes again,
rehearses answers nobody has asked yet
and tries to remember all the reasons
she deserves the job waiting across town.
She checks her messages once more.
Nothing.
She wishes somebody had written,
You'll be brilliant.
So quietly, inside her own head,
she tells herself instead.
And all around them,
cups are lifted,
chairs scrape against floors,
doors open and close
and people come and go.
Nobody looks extraordinary.
Nobody knows that the woman stirring her coffee
is frightened of what a doctor might say.
Nobody knows the old man by the window
is waiting for people who aren't coming.
Nobody knows the man holding his mug
is trying to steady his hands.
Nobody knows the young woman near the counter
would give anything for one person
to tell her they believe in her.
They see coats.
Shoes.
Hair.
Half finished drinks.
They do not see the lives beneath them.
Perhaps that is the strangest thing
about being surrounded by people.
We can sit inches from somebody
and know absolutely nothing
about the courage it took them
to get out of bed that morning.
Loneliness is not always having nobody.
Sometimes it is having nobody
who knows.
Nobody who knows you're frightened.
Nobody who knows you're waiting.
Nobody who knows you're pretending.
Nobody who knows that today,
of all days,
you could really have done with someone
sitting in the chair opposite.
And perhaps that is worth remembering
when somebody is slow at the till,
when a stranger seems distracted,
when somebody doesn't smile back,
when a person appears perfectly fine
because perfectly fine
is often the easiest costume to wear.
A café can hold a hundred people
and a hundred different kinds of loneliness.
A diagnosis waiting to be heard.
A family slowly drifting apart.
A verdict yet to be given.
A future waiting on the other side
of an interview room.
And perhaps someone else,
at another little table,
looking around the very same café
and wondering why everybody else
seems to have life figured out.
They haven't.
They are carrying things too.
So be gentle with the people you pass.
You never know when the person beside you
is gathering every bit of courage they have
just to make it through
the next hour of their life.
And if today you are the one
sitting quietly with something
nobody else can see,
look around.
Among the coats,
the newspapers,
the phones
and the half finished cups,
you may not be the only lonely person
in the room.