A long long way

Some years ago, I had a serious taste for Science Fiction. I still have, to some extent, but whereas back then I liked the ideas enough to overlook weak writing more than I would in other genres, these days I'm fussier about all my reading and ask more of the books I pick up.

However, one book has been returning to mind, one which struck me powerfully at the time and I'm not sure I have the courage to reread.

In it, a crew of astronauts are sent to Titan, the best-known moon of Saturn. The exercise is a desperate one undertaken by an American government trying hard to revive confidence, and the technology is barely sufficient to get the mission to its destination even with good luck. The plan is that the hope embodied in the mission kick-starts a technological and cultural revival in the time taken to complete it, and a second spaceship with improved abilities can then be sent to collect the brave pioneers. The distance involved is incredible, such that even radio waves take hours to get there, and so there are years and years to plan the follow-up.

Things don't go well in any respect, and the hard-hitting aspect of the book to me was its depiction of utter loneliness. I don't think I'll be spoiling much for anybody if I say that the final scenes have one solitary surviving astronaut descending to a cold and desolate surface, all the others having died en route, transmitting hopeful messages to a distant Earth ... and getting no reply because a revolution has turned the whole Globe in on itself and nobody knows or cares about the last remaining human billions of miles away. I don't think (if I remember rightly) that the writing was all that powerful in itself, but something about the scenario gave me the horrors.

That feeling of being on your own can be like a particularly cold draught that finds its way in just when warmth is in short supply, and whispers messages you don't want to hear. I've felt it often enough over the years to know. It was never worth telling anyone about, because the standard brethren response would be that only sin can bring about such a sensation, and the way back to happiness is to give up something in your life which is against God's will and causing the alienation. If part of the problem is feeling fundamentally different to those around you, and yet still feeling unwilling to forgo their love and respect, that can't help. Obviously I've never been as far from human support as the moons of Saturn, but the situation had painful parallels.

My coping mechanism (I suppose everybody outside mental institutions has something like it) has been to try to be the person that others seem to need me to be. That's something that has only recently become clear to me. I pick up on clues from those who care, and attempt to mould myself into the person they expect and would like, while inside remains a sadder and weaker individual who only appears when I'm too tired to keep up the effort of being the "me" I present to the world. And, of course, at such times I feel a failure for having slipped, which compounds the problem, and the people I can least share the emotion with are those I feel I've failed.

These kinds of conflicts are a prime reason why I had to get out of my previous life. I hoped I could leave such things behind as unnecessary in a less judgmental world. But of course life and mental characteristics aren't as simple as that, and I find I slip into the old ways of reacting and build up problems that make no sense outside the restrictions of brethrenland. I'm still unsure at times what is the real me, and what is a collection of actions and reactions I've put on like a costume. The effort involved is sometimes a clue, but who wants to spend time around someone who makes no effort to conform? Not all costumes are a bad thing.

I'm not quite sure what I'm driving at here. Maybe the point is that, to some extent, the old saying that no man is an island is exactly wrong. We are all alone in our heads in some absolute way, and it's only once we have accepted and learned how to deal with the fact that we become sturdy enough for others to rely on us. I don't feel I've quite got there yet.