Written by Jordannah Elizabeth Graham

Last night, I sat alone at the bar in Tagliata, a high-end Italian restaurant in a wealthy downtown waterside district in Baltimore, Maryland called Harbor East. I had everything and nothing on my mind. 

Twenty minutes before I settled on where I would eat dinner, I had a drink and caught a few minutes of the Orioles game at Bar One, an expensive Black creole-inspired restaurant a few blocks away Tagliata. From there, I walked down a paradisial pier, clearing my mind long enough to gaze at the stunning orange and pink sunset that gleamed magnificently above me while well-to-do patrons of all backgrounds sat at tables outside of the strip of various portals of culinary decadence.  

To me, the people looked like cardboard characters in the diorama of my reality. I had gone to the pier emotionally condensed, wanting to decompress and relieve the tightness of my Third Eye and fill an inner Void that sat deep within me. The Void sits in anticipation, waiting for me to fill it with moments of self-reflection and inward adoration. The Void is patient. It has no awareness of external forces: the stresses, pressures, and the complexities of the material world. It simply waits for me. I just become more aware of it on certain days, as it softly nudges me like a drowsy elderly Saint Barnard who hopes to rest its large chin and snout on your lap. 

The Void waits for the days when I become lost in the plotlines that take place on the theatrical stage of existential life and serves as a reminder, quietly telling me, “I’ll wait for you.”

When I settled in at the bar in Tagliata, I felt some relief. I was somehow able to look normal, showing no signs of grief, sadness, or distraction. I could see it in the body language and lack of disturbance in the interactions of the patrons around me. I ordered my food and a glass of Reisling and allowed the tamed liveliness of the room to calm my overwhelm. 

I kept it together until the in-house pianist and lounge singer, who was out of my view, began to play Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb”. The melodic playing and soft emotion in his voice caused my eyes to well up. 

The feeling of loneliness washed over me, a feeling that I had been denying for a long time as I had many people in my life. But at that bar, with Pink Floyd’s penetrating lyrics playing softly in the corner of the room, I released. I dabbed the bottom lids of my eyes and covertly checked my knuckles to make sure my eyeliner had not been smudged.  

A friend of mine passed away a couple of days earlier and everyone in my life had been so wrapped up in what I was and wasn’t doing, how I was affecting them, I had no room to tell anyone what was going on with me.

I was maintaining an extremely demanding career, my mother had just survived breast cancer, and I was also still grieving my father, who died two years before. I had no room to talk about anything. Everyone had been behaving so selfishly that all I could do was feed myself an expensive dinner alone, knowing that no one had any idea that I had a life. I had needs and emotions that had nothing to do with what was going on with the immediacy of those who were in close proximity to me. 

And I felt like one wanted to know. 

If it didn’t have anything to do with me doing some form of labor or how I was behaving, who I was offending, or being constantly reminded that I was not in a relationship, there was no room for me to just be.

The feeling of loneliness proceeded to haunt me during my Uber ride home and on into bedtime. 

This morning, I woke up and played “Comfortably Numb” while I was in the shower and sang along, feeling back to myself. It doesn’t take much.  Nonetheless, the Void is always waiting, anticipating me.