Sometimes I think about one interaction I had in Simons, a time I was really and truly drunk, and (I like it, I think it creates a good visual) how I hung off him on his chest and arms, and how sweaty he was, and how good it felt for someone to be there to hold you up and to want you, and how he never texted me after getting my number, and I think about how he doesn’t even remember me or the night and how small actions like those blow up in my mind because they’re so few and far between.Â
In Lucky McKee’s “May,” we follow a lonely, socially awkward young woman (Angela Bettis) who desperately wants to be seen and touched. She finds a boy she deems perfect, and when he ultimately rejects her, her desire turns brutal and dangerous. May is a horror story, of course, but it’s also breathtakingly sad—and it hits absolutely way too close to home.Â
She begins by noticing Adam’s hands, which she calls perfect. She falls for him, watching him, placing herself in his path or in a coffee shop where she knows he’ll be, hoping for his attention. I mean, who hasn’t done that… right? You’ve all walked the same route on campus, hoping you’d see him when his 10:40 class gets out, just because you saw him take that path once.Â
And maybe, maybe, you interact. And each interaction becomes an obsession, repeated over and over in your mind and talked through with your roommate until the horse is well and truly dead. “He walked with me, you know. That has to mean something.” It’s much more fun, as someone with clearly nothing better to do, to stalk his sister’s Spotify account rather than make the first move. With no real romantic prospects, spending hours on his parents’ Facebook accounts becomes great entertainment.Â
May is lucky enough (and I use “lucky” loosely) to enter into a brief relationship with Adam, fueled by her desperation and his pity, his need to be adored. She takes this and runs with it, every small bit of kindness sustaining her for a little while longer. She is so touch-starved, craving his caress, his hands on her face. She’s enamored. And when things go wrong, it overwhelms her.Â
Adam decides, after she bites his lip until he bleeds, that she’s just a little too freaked out for him. He likes weird, he says, but not that weird. A fake pervert, a film-student dropout who made a softcore cannibalistic short film. There is a tendency, I think, for men to think they know what they want. They want a crazy girl—until she’s actually crazy. They want a weird girl—until she has weird interests, until she does something a little off, like engage in the cannibalistic tendencies he claims to enjoy. But he’s able to move on, of course. He finds a new girl, one who’s strange but not too strange. May is in much deeper, too taken by his reciprocation to allow him to just leave like that.Â
May berates herself when she drives him away—confused, pathetic and angry. She had something, she did, and now it’s gone. Despite their connection lasting only a few days, she experiences it with so much more depth because of the extent of her isolation. It means so much more to her than it does to him. Lonely people hold onto each interaction so tightly, so they don’t forget that, at one point, they were wanted, at one point, they were held, touched and seen. Obsession is so easy to throw yourself into. It fills an ache.Â
In college, we are surrounded by images we idealize into versions of ourselves we should be. If you don’t have it all, do you really have anything? You could always have more friends, closer friends, a boyfriend. It’s like everyone thinks the love of their life is in Gainesville. When you see this all around you, and you don’t have it, there’s a sickening, constant feeling of alienation. Perhaps you’re doing something wrong, or perhaps you are doing something wrong. You’re like everyone else. You’re human too. But you’re not fitting in, whatever that means. And it’s taboo to mention this; it shocks and saddens people if you say it out loud. We’re all there for you…until you need us to be.Â
I’ve fallen into the trap of connecting with people who just want you because they think you’re attractive—then at least someone is finding you attractive, at least someone is curing the unbearable loneliness that eats you up inside, even if it’s just for a short time. You can convince yourself you’re just horny. You’re just as much a pervert as he is. And that might be true, but how much of it is natural, and how much of it is compensation for that ever-present longing for a connection? I have the pathetic feeling that we could do away with hookup culture if we were all just a little nicer to each other.Â
Throughout the movie, May tries hard to be normal—a value instilled in her by her mother. She wants to belong. But she’s been alone for so long that she doesn’t know what that really means, and she’s rejected over and over, despite how much she tries. She demonstrates how a lack of social interaction and affection can warp the mind, with devastating consequences. I maintain that May didn’t want to resort to the brutality she committed. But she was so sad; she wanted so badly to have a friend. It is what it is.Â
I wonder often if others on campus feel this separation—this painful awkwardness built from the embarrassment of being alone. Am I that different from the rest of you? What makes me someone who is lonely? Being a strange girl in an SEC school is sort of like a divine test from God (or maybe not). Perhaps if I were less of what I am, I would be more palatable to someone with perfect hands.Â
You know, some people are alone forever.Â