“An essential exploration of the isolation inherent in our era of virtual hyperconnection [that] also asks how we can find our way back to one another.”—New York Times Book Review
“I was blown away."—Hanif Abdurraqib, Tin House Editor-at-Large
What does it mean to be a body behind a screen, lost in the hustle of an online world? In our age of digital hyper-connection, Athena Dixon invites us to consider this question with depth, heart, and ferocity, investigating the gaps that technology cannot fill and confronting a lifetime of loneliness. Living alone as a middle-aged woman without children or pets and working forty hours a week from home, more than three hundred fifty miles from her family and friends, Dixon begins watching mystery videos on YouTube, listening to true crime podcasts, and playing video game walk-throughs just to hear another human voice. She discovers the story of Joyce Carol Vincent, a woman who died alone, her body remaining in front of a glowing television set for three years before the world finally noticed. Searching for connection, Dixon plumbs the depths of communal loneliness, asking essential questions of herself and all of us: How have her past decisions left her so alone? Are we, as humans, linked by a shared loneliness? How do we see the world and our place in it? And finally, how do we find our way back to each other? Searing and searching, The Loneliness Files is a groundbreaking memoir in essays that ultimately brings us together in its piercing, revelatory examination of how and why it is that we break apart.
"1143177601"
The Loneliness Files
“An essential exploration of the isolation inherent in our era of virtual hyperconnection [that] also asks how we can find our way back to one another.”—New York Times Book Review
“I was blown away."—Hanif Abdurraqib, Tin House Editor-at-Large
What does it mean to be a body behind a screen, lost in the hustle of an online world? In our age of digital hyper-connection, Athena Dixon invites us to consider this question with depth, heart, and ferocity, investigating the gaps that technology cannot fill and confronting a lifetime of loneliness. Living alone as a middle-aged woman without children or pets and working forty hours a week from home, more than three hundred fifty miles from her family and friends, Dixon begins watching mystery videos on YouTube, listening to true crime podcasts, and playing video game walk-throughs just to hear another human voice. She discovers the story of Joyce Carol Vincent, a woman who died alone, her body remaining in front of a glowing television set for three years before the world finally noticed. Searching for connection, Dixon plumbs the depths of communal loneliness, asking essential questions of herself and all of us: How have her past decisions left her so alone? Are we, as humans, linked by a shared loneliness? How do we see the world and our place in it? And finally, how do we find our way back to each other? Searing and searching, The Loneliness Files is a groundbreaking memoir in essays that ultimately brings us together in its piercing, revelatory examination of how and why it is that we break apart.
“An essential exploration of the isolation inherent in our era of virtual hyperconnection [that] also asks how we can find our way back to one another.”—New York Times Book Review
“I was blown away."—Hanif Abdurraqib, Tin House Editor-at-Large
What does it mean to be a body behind a screen, lost in the hustle of an online world? In our age of digital hyper-connection, Athena Dixon invites us to consider this question with depth, heart, and ferocity, investigating the gaps that technology cannot fill and confronting a lifetime of loneliness. Living alone as a middle-aged woman without children or pets and working forty hours a week from home, more than three hundred fifty miles from her family and friends, Dixon begins watching mystery videos on YouTube, listening to true crime podcasts, and playing video game walk-throughs just to hear another human voice. She discovers the story of Joyce Carol Vincent, a woman who died alone, her body remaining in front of a glowing television set for three years before the world finally noticed. Searching for connection, Dixon plumbs the depths of communal loneliness, asking essential questions of herself and all of us: How have her past decisions left her so alone? Are we, as humans, linked by a shared loneliness? How do we see the world and our place in it? And finally, how do we find our way back to each other? Searing and searching, The Loneliness Files is a groundbreaking memoir in essays that ultimately brings us together in its piercing, revelatory examination of how and why it is that we break apart.
Athena Dixon is a poet, essayist, and editor. Her work is included in the anthology The BreakBeat Poets Vol.2: Black Girl Magic and her craft work appears in Getting to the Truth: The Craft and Practice of Creative Nonfiction. Athena is an alumna of VONA, Callaloo, and Tin House and has received a prose fellowship from The Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. Born and raised in Northeast Ohio, Athena now resides in Philadelphia.
Read an Excerpt
I remember loneliness because it is pervasive. It has a way of wrapping itself around me until it hides what’s actually true. It squeezes tightly in my mind until what makes sense, what’s actually happened, is distorted. Sometimes the loneliness makes me forget the goodness and the connection of my life. I find ways to compartmentalize these experiences until it is easy to remember only what I want. I think alone is sexy. Mysterious in its heaviness. Alone seems like a choice. Loneliness doesn’t. This seems like I’ve been forgotten, passed over, discarded. It can feel like the world is way too bright—just an expanse of whiteness with nothing else in sight. It makes me feel singular and small. On the cusp of 2021, in a green dress and red lipstick, I told myself I could cry. One wailing, sobbing mess of a breakdown between sips of liquor because when I woke up the next morning the world would appear to be new. This New Year’s Eve was only a celebration of a year that needed to end. A year that saw some of us sink into isolation and others delve further into individualism and selfishness. This night was a cap to months of loneliness. A small bit of joy and release before heading into the bleakness of what seemed to be the coming year. I’d checked out of the news months ago—too overwhelmed by death and discord that I felt myself slipping too much into darkness. This cry was a promise to myself that it would wash away the concrete deaths and dying dreams of what 2020 could have been. I had a book on the way and I’d finally started to find my voice when I’d been so sure I’d lost it. As selfish as my feelings may have been, it just wasn’t fair and I wanted to wallow. I cried and then danced until my body slowed to rocking, and when the countdown ended the loneliness came in like a wave. My loneliness is not groundbreaking, though. And it is not tragic. It just is. Nothing more and nothing less. I don’t expect it to be important to anyone other than myself, but I write about it anyway. I turn it over like something precious in my hands—carefully as it floats across my fingers so I can see the details of it. Where dust and dirt and grit hide—the things that irritate and choke me when I breathe too deeply. My loneliness is deep. It’s oddly comforting because I know what to expect. It’s like a light switch—sudden and complete—when it rears its head. My body starts to wind down and my mind disengages. Loneliness and isolation have been a slow build of contentment over the years before the sudden revelation of how the two are really disconnect disguised as choice. How between parents, a sibling, family, and friends is always the fear that I will die alone. That no one will remember me.
