“There is a kind of loneliness that comes from being with people. The kind that is more about a recognition of the failure of communication. The gaps. Like the other day this woman came over and I served her tea and her child played with my child. The woman told me of her career trajectory, which I have already heard in this same excruciating detail twice before. It involves a broken engagement and an incomplete PhD program. Which she considers failure, having come from some ambitious North Shore whatever world. I don’t consider either thing failure at all. Still she speaks to me as if I am her judge, or confessor. I felt so lonely hearing her stories, because I know they are about her and her issues and her judges and have nothing to do with me. I nod, sip my tea, thinking about how hard it is to really truly connect with another human being.”
— Suzanne Scanlon, from Promising Young Women
