Who needs ice cream when people love you?

It hadn't been my best weekend. On Friday night, I had been so lonely that I had walked from convenience store to convenience store buying different bags of chips to make me feel better. I noticed this as I was doing it, but did it anyway. On top of that, I was doing this on a night when I knew that a bunch of my friends were having a lovely party, that I had been invited to, that was even my kind of a party- that I hadn't gone to, for a reason that I still didn't understand: it wasn't that I didn't want to go to the party, it was just that I didn't want to go the party. So I was trying to listen to that part of me that didn't want to go. But in the end, it seemed, part of me wanted some kind of company because I was buying chips, at convenience stores, to make me feel not so lonely. Also, it wasn't working. The chips tasted awful- all fake and chemical and also, I knew that I was buying chips to make me feel less lonely and I knew that chips weren't going to help me, but I just kept walking.
At the end of the block, I came to my house. I knew that I would feel better if I went home and called a friend, or did some writing, or read a book, or even listened to music. I totally knew that. But as I stood there, at the end of the block, I also knew that I could walk two extra blocks to another convenience store, where they had really bad fake chocolate goods (Zingers, I believe). I really wanted to do that, really wanted to go there and buy those really bad chocolate goods. I imagined the feel of the frosting in my mouth, the soft resistance of the cake as I took a bite, the pleasure of there being two in the package so that I could repeat the experience.
"Really?" I asked myself as I considered this. "Really you're going to walk two blocks past your own house to buy crap that you know is not going to make you feel good? Really?"
"Yes," I answered as I did it.
I walked down the hill, crossed the street, and kept walking to the corner store. I watched myself do this, saw myself in my blue jacket walking all alone in the middle of this big city to get to a convenience store where I was buying crap to make myself feel better.
"You are totally alone and choosing to be totally alone. You are doing this," I said to myself as I walked down the hill.
And I was. It was what I did that night. I walked around that store for 10 minutes, trying to find the food that would bring me pleasure. At one point, a woman came in and asked the owner if he sold cake frosting. I think he didn't understand what she was asking for because he looked at her blankly. I, however, knew exactly where the frosting was, it was one of the foods I had considered in my search.
"It's right here," I said, and pointed to the top shelf.
"Oh my gosh- thank you so much!" she said, and I smiled as I watched her pay for it at the front. I knew that feeling of actually needing something from the store and searching for it and it finally being there, knew that sense of relief and gratitude.
"See?" I thought to myself. "That's what makes you feel better you know, you just being you, you helping others."
But I kept walking around the store anyway. Finally, I stopped in front of a cheese-danish wrapped in plastic. Honestly, I'm not a huge cheese-danish fan but that night, that was what I wanted, so I picked it up. Then I got worried that I might want some chocolate later so I went over to their selection of Ritter and got the one with cornflakes in it, because it was new so it felt like I could justify buying it.
I paid for the crap and within a block of the store, had eaten all of the cheese danish and half of the Ritter bar.
"Well, that didn't work, did it?" I pointed out to myself. "All you are now is walking back up the hill, with crap inside you. You're still alone. You don't feel any better. You're still walking."
I walked up the hill, into my house, and turned on the radio. I read through my old blogposts until it seemed late enough to go to bed, and then went to bed.
The next morning, as I saw the people who had been at the party, they asked me where I was, why I hadn't come, told me I was missed, and told me about all the food and the sweetness of the party itself. I was disappointed in myself for missing the party. I felt foolish for choosing to be alone when I could have been with friends. I was glad that the party was so sweet, that so many people had gone, that everyone seemed to have a good time.

A couple of times throughout the weekend, I had a chance to talk with two different friends, at length, about where I was on Friday night. With both people I was honest: instead of going to the party, I had walked the streets in my neighborhood, searching for food in convenience stores in an attempt to make myself feel not so alone.
Both people listened to me with a look that wasn't concern or pity but love: a sadness that I had experienced that, a wish that things could have been different, and perhaps a desire that they could have done something so that I could see that I was loved, that, in fact, I am loved, right now. As I saw this look on their faces, felt their presence as I spoke, I realized that in my sharing this with them, not to say how awful I was or how sad it was, simply by telling them what I had done on Friday night, by simply letting them in on my loneliness, we were sharing, being together, I wasn't alone in my loneliness. They were right there with me.

On Sunday night of that same weekend, I was waiting for the bus to take me home after having dinner with a friend. The sign on the bus stop said it would be 20 minutes before the next bus came so I decided to walk home instead. As I walked up that same street that I had walked down on Friday night I thought to myself "Cool, I can stop by a convenience store and buy myself a treat." As I considered which treat I wanted, the thought of an ice cream cone popped in to my head.
"Ice cream cone?" I asked myself. "Why would you want that? It's not hot." I considered which stores would have ice cream cones but realized that I could only buy a pint of ice cream or a milkshake and neither of those seemed to be what I was wanting. "Why an ice cream cone?" I asked myself again.
And then I remembered. On extremely rare occasions, when I was a little girl, usually after a performance or special event at school, my dad would take us to the ice cream shop. It was a huge treat for us. We never had dessert at home. But on these occasions, we got to pick out what flavor we wanted, we got sugar cones, and my dad would even get an ice cream for himself: Swiss Orange Chip.
"Oh," I said. "You're wanting to feel loved. You're wanting to feel treated. You're wanting to feel rewarded for doing something good."
And then a voice popped into my head.
"You are loved. You actually are loved."
And I recalled the looks on the faces of the people who I had shared with that weekend. They loved me. I was loved.
And so I let go of search for the ice cream cone, and just walked home.