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From "The Best Thing About Marriage is Divorce" by Kurt Caswell

...We Americans are especially hard-lined in our belief that we're a liberated nation when it comes to love and marriage. With Platonic fealty, our mission is to seek and find that one individual God made only for us. He or she is out there somewhere, we believe, and when the moment is right (perhaps when God finds us ready or worthy--is this the one?), a chance meeting will result in a tender courtship, love, marriage, children, and "joy and union without end," as Milton put it. This pious attitude has Americans looking to their marriage partners to fulfill all needs and desires: emotional, spiritual, sexual, intellectual, and financial. Who can live up to that? Furthermore, researchers say, such reliance on our spouses often results in a separation from our communities. Our sphere of friendships atrophies, and soon not only do we look to our spouse for everything, but our spouse is the only one left to look to. No wonder over half of all marriages in the U.S. end in divorce, and paradoxically, the rate is even higher in the Bible Belt.

This quote is a bit out of context, but echoes things brought up in recent conversations with some friends.
For the full essay (which has a bit of a different message than that of just this quote) check out the latest issue (Fall/Winter 2007-2008) of Ninth Letter.

What Sarah Said

by Death Cab For Cutie

And it came to me then that every plan
Is a tiny prayer to father time
As I stared at my shoes in the ICU
That reeked of piss and 409
And I rationed my breaths as I said to myself
That I’ve already taken too much today
As each descending peak on the LCD
Took you a little farther away from me
Away from me

Amongst the vending machines and year-old magazines
In a place where we only say goodbye
It stung like a violent wind that our memories depend
On a faulty camera in our minds
And I knew that you were a truth I would rather lose
Than to have never lain beside at all
And I looked around at all the eyes on the ground
As the TV entertained itself

‘Cause there’s no comfort in the waiting room
Just nervous faces bracing for bad news
And then the nurse comes ‘round and everyone lifts their heads
But I’m thinking of what Sarah said
That love is watching someone die

So who’s gonna watch you die?
So who's gonna watch you die?

A Conversation With Myself

---

From Firefly, aboard the spaceship Serenity.
Engine broken. Life support failing.

Inara: Mal, come with us.

Mal: Can't. Four to a shuttle, Inara. Four.

Inara: One more. You know it can't make a difference. Not now.

Mal: I'm not leaving Serenity.

Inara: Mal, you don't have to die alone.

Mal: (Pauses.) Everybody dies alone.

---

That's something you've been realizing more and more in the past few years.

When you were five, and you cried yourself to sleep as you thought about
how your parents would eventually die, you didn't realize, but it wasn't about just them.
It was also about how the sun would blow up after millions of years. Your sister tried
to comfort you...saying that we'd all be long dead before that ever happened.
So, you would look up at the ceiling in your room at night and hold on
to your stuffed animal...it was a dog...and you would think about how
everything would be gone. Everything you knew. It would all leave you.
But what you didn't realize in that five year old head, was that nothing
was ever really with you.

You tried to find a way. You thought maybe close friends would help.
You lost yourself in fantasy. Some violent. Some romantic.
Some sexual. All appealing to your need to be a part of something.
Your imagination grew. You thought maybe
a girlfriend...a soul mate would help. Community, love, hope.
You started to write.

And it seemed to work. But every now and then, you'd find yourself
staring at the ceiling. Alone. It seemed like the curse
of consciousness...to be trapped. A solitude that would only end
when you were dead.

You sought an audience for your work. Poured out your feelings into
your writing. Thought you could connect with people. And I'm sure
you did. But you came to realize that the audience goes to their own homes
to sleep. They go to their own lives to live.

Its presence grew. Every night...whether there was someone sleeping
next to you or in the next room over, you would feel the distance. Because
they weren't really there with you.

You developed relationships. Grew close to people. Made good friends.
Became intimate with some who seemed to know your mind, or seemed
to know it better than you ever thought possible. And the closer you got,
the more you felt the depth of the distance between people...between you
and everyone.

You wonder about other people. If they think about these things. And if they do,
how do they cope with it?

You've grown to accept that that's the way life is. A part of consciousness...a void
that cries for something more.

So, that's why you've stopped looking for an audience. Stopped looking for someone
to be one with you in your consciousness...to be one with you in your very existence.
Because it's not a role that any person can fill. And you wonder where
you got the crazy idea in the first place...that it could be possible. At any rate, it doesn't
matter to you anymore, because it's just not important to you anymore.
But you wonder about your friends. And wonder if maybe they think the same thing...
are looking for the same thing you were, but just don't realize it.
You think maybe they don't realize it because they don't like thinking about things you like
to think about. How someone is dying every second. How someone is being tortured right now.
How it could be us. How we could drop dead any second. (And why shouldn't it be us?)
How we all die alone. How we all really live alone. Trapped in consciousness.

These thoughts make you smile now.
Because you've also come to realize, that it's important to you to wrap your heart
around that which is beautiful and that which is horrible. You seek to always cling
to both at the same time, feeling the full power of both. If you lose beauty, then
you become cynical and bitter. If you lose the horrible, you become naive and ignorant...
no more effective in the world than an overdosing junky. And if you lose your heart
well, then you're pretty deranged and probably need medical attention.
These thoughts make you smile too.

You decide to post this online, knowing that most people probably won't get to this part because
most people don't bother fully reading long entries. And even if they did, they probably wouldn't
understand or wouldn't relate. But that's okay. Because them reading it doesn't matter to you
the way it used to. Because their audienceship doesn't matter like it used to.
And that makes you smile too.
Not that that matters at all.
Not that that's the point at all.