Two Witnesses

P.S. I know you two, and if I'm gone, I know what you could become.

Because I know Who You Really Are - 

A Junkie who solves crimes to get high,

and 

the Doctor Who never came home from The War. 

Will you listen to me? 

Who You Really Are, it doesn't matter. 

It's all about The Legend, The Stories, The Adventures. 

There is a last refuge for The Desperate, The Unloved, The Persecuted. 

There is a Final Court of Appeal for EVERYONE. 

When Life gets Too Strange, Too Impossible, Too Frightening, there is always One Last Hope. 

When all else fails, there are two men, sitting, arguing in a scruffy flat, like they've ALWAYS been there 

And they ALWAYS will. 

The Best and Wisest Men I have ever known.

My Baker Street Boys.

Sherlock Holmes 

and 

Doctor Watson.

Niggle was lying in the dark, resting completely; so that, as he had not been either feeling or thinking at all, he might have been lying there for hours or for years, as far as he could tell. But now he heard Voices: not voices that he had ever heard before. There seemed to be a Medical Board, or perhaps a Court of Inquiry, going on close at hand, in an adjoining room with the door open, possibly, though he could not see any light.

"Now the Niggle case," said a Voice, a severe voice, more severe than the doctor's.

"What was the matter with him?" said a Second Voice, a voice that you might have called gentle, though it was not soft-it was a voice of authority, and sounded at once hopeful and sad. "What was the matter with Niggle? His heart was in the right place."

"Yes, but it did not function properly," said the First Voice. "And his head was not screwed on tight enough: he hardly ever thought at all. Look at the time he wasted, not even amusing himself! He never got ready for his journey. He was moderately well-off, and yet he arrived here almost destitute, and had to be put in the paupers' wing. A bad case, I am afraid. I think he should stay some time yet."

"It would not do him any harm, perhaps," said the Second Voice. "But, of course, he is only a little man. He was never meant to be anything very much; and he was never very strong. Let us look at the Records. Yes. There are some favourable points, you know."

"Perhaps," said the First Voice; "but very few that will really bear examination."

"Well," said the Second Voice, "there are these. He was a painter by nature. In a minor way, of course; still, a Leaf by Niggle has a charm of its own. He took a great deal of pains with leaves, just for their own sake. But he never thought that that made him important. There is no note in the Records of his pretending, even to himself, that it excused his neglect of things ordered by the law."

"Then he should not have neglected so many," said the First Voice.

"All the same, he did answer a good many Calls."

"A small percentage, mostly of the easier sort, and he called those Interruptions. The Records are full of the word, together with a lot of complaints and silly imprecations."

"True; but they looked like interruptions to him, of course, poor little man. And there is this: he never expected any Return, as so many of his sort call it. There is the Parish case, the one that came in later. He was Niggle's neighbour, never did a stroke for him, and seldom showed any gratitude at all. But there is no note in the Records that Niggle expected Parish's gratitude; he does not seem to have thought about it."

"Yes, that is a point," said the First Voice; "but rather small. I think you will find Niggle often merely forgot. Things he had to do for Parish he put out of his mind as a nuisance he had done with."

"Still, there is this last report," said the Second Voice, "that wet bicycle-ride. I rather lay stress on that. It seems plain that this was a genuine sacrifice: Niggle guessed that he was throwing away his last chance with his picture, and he guessed, too, that Parish was worrying unnecessarily."

"I think you put it too strongly," said the First Voice. "But you have the last word. It is your task, of course, to put the best interpretation on the facts. Sometimes they will bear it. What do you propose?"

"I think it is a case for a little gentle treatment now," said the Second Voice.

Niggle thought that he had never heard anything so generous as that Voice. It made Gentle Treatment sound like a load of rich gifts, and the summons to a King's feast. 

Then suddenly Niggle felt ashamed. To hear that he was considered a case for Gentle Treatment overwhelmed him, and made him blush in the dark. It was like being publicly praised, when you and all the audience knew that the praise was not deserved. Niggle hid his blushes in the rough blanket.

There was a silence. Then the First Voice spoke to Niggle, quite close. "You have been listening," it said.

"Yes," said Niggle.

"Well, what have you to say?"

"Could you tell me about Parish?" said Niggle. "I should like to see him again. I hope he is not very ill? Can you cure his leg? It used to give him a wretched time. And please don't worry about him and me. He was a very good neighbour, and let me have excellent potatoes very cheap, which saved me a lot of time."

"Did he?" said the First Voice. "I am glad to hear.”

There was another silence. Niggle heard the Voices receding. "Well, I agree," he heard the First Voice say in the distance. "Let him go on to the next stage. 

Tomorrow, if you like."

Unk.

The way Campbell explained it, 
Young Men need a  
Secondary Father 
to finish raising them.




Beyond their Biological Father, 
they need a surrogate, 
traditionally 

a  
minister 

or a 
coach 

or a 
military officer.




The floatsam and jetsam of a generation 
washed up on the beach of last resort.



That's why street gangs are so appealing.   


They send you men out, 
like Knights on Quests 
 to hone their skills and improve themselves.



And all the TRADITIONAL Mentors -- forget it.



Men are presumptive predators. 

They're leaving Teaching in droves.


Religious Leaders  
are pariahs.


Sports Coaches 
are stigmatized as odds-on pedophiles.



Even The Military is sketchy with sexual goings-on.

A Generation of Apprentices 
Without Masters.

Ann Windicombe Makes Men (and Whinging Women) Self-Conscious

Men* have the absolute and  exclusive claim to Rights of Ownership over their reputation as one of the non-material fruits of their works and their labour in accordance with Natural Law.

That means that your Good Name and Standing within the community or locality you currently reside in, such as it is

(Assuming you even have a good reputation...) 

constitutes a significant  non-redeemable, non-physical, non-transferable asset which therefore constitutes  part of your property, one which cannot merely be strippped away from you or removed,

You own it (wholesale), nobody, not one single other person has the right to touch it, with or without your prior consent, 

Nor Inflict deliberate harm or injury upon it, in any way, even with your permission orders  or instructions to demolish the whole outter edifice

 —-

And Anybody that might want to give that a try — 

You Will Not End Well, 

if that is how things are expected to be in your cites, now...

Consent is the deliberate agreement required of those concerned in legal transactions in order to legalize such actions. Words, deeds, writing, or silence hear witness to the existence of this consent. Completeness of consent is gauged not so much by the preliminaries of transactions as by their ratification, which is the psychological development of incipient consent, and gives consistency to legal transactions. The consent necessary to constitute contracts must be internal, external, mutual, and deliberate. Some authorities claim that contracts formed without any intention on the part of the contracting parties to oblige themselves are valid; others more rightly maintain the contrary, since the very essence of contracts embodies obligation. Consequently, whoever is unprepared to admit this obligation is in no position to make a contract. Two possible suppositions here present themselves. In the first the promise and intention of not assuming any obligation concern the same object under the same respect. Promises made in this way are utterly meaningless. In the second supposition the promise and intention of waiving the obligation refer to the same object under different respects. In such cases it is necessary to ascertain which of these two contrary tendencies of the will is dominant. If the intention of making a contract possess greater efficacy, the obligation thereunto corresponding unquestionably holds good. On the contrary, if the intention of accepting no obligation prevail, no contract can be formed. Finally, if one intention is just as efficacious as another, the formation of a contract would then involve quest for an unattainable result. Contracts made by individuals having absolutely no intention of abiding by the obligation connected therewith are altogether invalid, and the parties thus fictitiously contracting are bound to indemnify those whose interests thereby suffer. The contract in question must always be capable of begetting an obligation. It is not impossible to find genuine consent which is worthless for giving consistency to contracts either because it is nullified beforehand by positive law or because it is the result of error, fraud, or fear (see CONTRACT).

Error affecting the very nature of the contract, or concerning the substance of the object in question or a naturally substantial quality of the object, or one considered indispensable by the contracting parties, vitiates consent and invalidates contracts. Error regarding an accidental quality of the contract, or pertaining to the motive underlying the contract, or to its material object, is insufficient to vitiate consent or nullify contracts. In like manner fraud, whether introduced by one of the contracting parties or by an extern, for the sake of provoking consent in the other party, counteracts consent as often as such fraud circumscribes the nature of the contract, the substance of the object at stake, or a quality naturally substantiated in that object or esteemed as substantial by the one upon whom the fraud is perpetrated. As often as accidental fraud induces another, in some measure, to consent, he is at liberty to rescind the contract, provided it is naturally dissoluble. In general, grave fear lawfully superinduced does not militate against consent in the will, and therefore renders contracts neither invalid nor rescindable. On the other hand, while fear unlawfully superinduced to extort consent does not invalidate contracts, it gives the intimidated party the liberty of rescinding them. According to the civil law of the United States, no contract is binding without the mutual assent of both parties. They must assent at the same time and to the same thing. This mutual assent consists of an offer by one party and its acceptance by another. When the offer is verbal, and the time allowed for acceptance is not mentioned, the offer must be immediately accepted to constitute a contract. In case the offer and acceptance are written and pass through the mail, the contract is complete when the acceptance is mailed, provided the party accepting has received no notice of the withdrawal of the offer before mailing his letter. As far as the validity of matrimony is concerned, genuine, internal, personal consent of both parties, covering the present and indicated by external signs, is unquestionably required. While internal consent must be complemented by some external manifestation, words are by no means necessary. The Congregation of the Inquisition (22 August, 1860) decided that marriages are entirely valid when the ceremony takes place in the presence of witnesses and according to the custom of the country in a manner which indicates that the contracting parties here and now mutually agree to enter wedlock. At the same time, if one or both contracting parties have no present intention of marrying in circumstances such as those outlined, they can make no marriage contract. The required matrimonial consent signified by proxy does not militate against the validity of the marriage contract. This consent must include the material object of the matrimonial contract, which material object is the mutual right of one party to the body of the other, a right that carries with it every prerogative vested therein by the laws of nature. It is not necessary, however, that the intention of parties to a marriage contract should be explicitly directed to all its conditions or circumstances. On the contrary, an intention implicitly thereunto directed is entirely sufficient for all practical intents and purposes. Hence, as often as marriageable parties intend to contract marriage in the way in which men and women ordinarily understand that agreement, or according to the way in which it was instituted by the Author of this sacrament, they exhibit consent sufficient to render their marriage contract entirely valid, provided nothing essential is positively excluded by a counter intention usurping the place of the chief, indispensable intention in entering matrimony. While marriage contracts are null unless based on the consent of those concerned, it is usually very difficult to establish the actual absence of this consent so as to satisfy the judge in a matrimonial court, once the marriage ceremony has really taken place. (For the renewal of consent in the case of invalid marriages, see REVALIDATION, and for the consent requisite for espousals, see ESPOUSALS.) While in canon law the consent of parents is not necessary to validate the marriages of their children, it is usually required to render such marriages legitimate. [For the civil law concerning the consent of parents in France (modified 1907), Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Canada, etc., see MARRIAGE.]

In the United States the common law exacts no solemnity to validate matrimonial consent. In many of the States, however, special statutes carrying a penalty require certain conditions for the legitimacy of such consent. Common law regards marriage as a civil contract for which consent alone is essential. It demands no legal forms, nor religious solemnities, nor special mode of proof. According to common law, consent indicated by words covering the present, whether consummation follows or not, or by words pertaining to the future together with consummation, constitutes a valid marriage. In New York, Illinois, and Rhode Island words pertaining to the future, even with subsequent consummation, no longer render a marriage valid. Even without explicit proof of words implying consent, cohabitation, acknowledgment of a marriage by the parties concerned, reception of such parties as husband and wife by relatives, friends, or society, are sufficient to establish a valid marriage.

Canon law requires the consent of cathedral chapters to lend validity to certain official acts of bishops. In general, this consent is necessary in such matters as usually involve a serious obligation or the possibility of a notable damage, or in matters which simultaneously pertain to bishops and their chapters. Nevertheless, unwritten law can narrow the rights of chapters and widen the liberty of bishops in these matters unless circumstances conspire to stamp particular measures as unreasonable. In like manner, unwritten law may exact the consent of chapters in matters of secondary importance, a requirement sometimes enjoined by special statutes. When immediate action is necessary, and it is impossible to convoke their chapters, bishops may proceed validly without the chapters' consent. Inasmuch as there are no cathedral chapters in the United States, diocesan consultors constitute the advisory board of the bishops. The Third Plenary Council of Baltimore specifies several instances in which the bishops, though not obliged to abide by the advice of their consultors, are bound to seek such advice, else their acts in such cases are liable to nullification.

For consent in its relation to sinful acts, see SIN, and for the consent of the legislative authority in the formation of consuetudinary law, see CUSTOM.

OJETTI, Synopsis rerum moralium et juris pontificii (Prato, 1904); Instructio Pastoralis Eyestettensis (Freiburg, 1902), index, s. v. Consensus;HEINER, Grundriss des kath. Eherechts (Münster, 1905), index, s. v. Konsens; HERGENRÖTHER-HOLLWECK, Lehrbuck des kath. Kirchenrechts (Freiburg, 1905), index, s. v. Consensus; PERMANEDER in Kirchenlex., III, 956 sqq., and in general all manuals and dictionaries of canon, civil (Roman), and national legislations. For the history of consent in all that pertains to the marriage contract, ESMEIN, Le Mariage en droit canonique (Paris, 1891), II, in index s. v. Consentement.

J. D. O'NEILL.

PAY ATTENTION

The Mesopotamian Emperor  
acted out Marduk. 

He was ALLOWED to be Emperor 
insofar as he was 
A Good Marduk. 

That meant that,
He had eyes all the way around his head, 
and
He could speak magick.

He could speak properly.

Conan: 
What gods do you pray to?

Subotai:
I pray to the four winds... and you?

Conan: 
To Crom...
but I seldom pray to Him -- 

He doesn't listen.

Subotai: 
[chuckles] 
What good is he then?
Ah, it's just as I've always said.

Conan:
He is strong!
If I die, I have to go before him, and he will ask me,
   "What is the riddle of steel?"
If I don't know it, he will cast me out of Valhalla and laugh at me.

That's Crom — 

Strong on his mountain!

Subotai:
Ah, my god is greater.

Conan: 
[chuckles]
Crom laughs at your Four Winds.
He laughs from his mountain.

Subotai:
My God is Stronger.
He is  
The Everlasting Sky!
Your god lives underneath him.

[Conan shoots Subotai a skeptical look. Subotai laughs]

" The ancient Mesopotamians and the ancient Egyptians had some very interesting, dramatic ideas about that. 

For example
—Very Briefly—
There was a deity known as Marduk. 

Marduk was a Mesopotamian deity, and imagine this is sort of what happened. 
As an empire grew out of the post-ice age

—15,000 years ago, 10,000 years ago—

All these tribes came together. 

These tribes each had their own deity—their own image of the ideal. 
But then they started to occupy the same territory.

!! THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE !!

 One tribe had God A, and one tribe had God B,
and one could wipe the other one out, 
and then it would just be God A, who wins. 

That’s not so good, because maybe you want to trade with those people, or maybe you don’t want to lose half your population in a war. 

So then you have to have an argument about whose God is going to take priority—which ideal is going to take priority. 

What seems to happen is represented in mythology as a battle of the gods in celestial space. 

From a practical perspective, it’s more like an ongoing dialog :

' You believe this; I believe this. 
You believe that; I believe this. 
How are we going to meld that together? '

You take God A, and you take God B, and maybe what you do is extract God C from them, and you say,
 ‘God C now has the attributes of A and B.’ 

And then some other tribes come in, and C takes them over, too. 

Take Marduk, for example. 

He has 50 different names, at least in part, of the subordinate gods—that represented the tribes that came together to make the civilization. 

That’s part of the process by which that abstracted ideal is abstracted. 

You think, 
‘This is important, and it works, because your tribe is alive -

And so we’ll take the best of both, if we can manage it, 
and extract out something, that’s even more abstract, 
that covers both of us.’ 

I’ll give you a couple of Marduk’s interesting features. 

He has eyes all the way around his head. 

He’s elected by all the other gods to be King God. 

That’s the first thing. 
That’s quite cool. 

They elect him because they’re facing a terrible threat—sort of like a flood and a monster combined. 

Marduk basically says that, 

if they elect him top God,
he’ll go out and stop the flood monster, 
and they won’t all get wiped out. 

It’s a serious threat. 

It’s Chaos itself making its comeback. 

SALTWATER 

All the gods agree, 
and Marduk is the new manifestation. 

He’s got eyes all the way around His head, 
and
He speaks magic words. 

When he fights, he fights this deity called Tiamat. 

We need to know that, because the word 
‘Tiamat’ is associated with the word 'tehom.' 

Tehom is the Chaos that God makes Order out of at The Beginning of Time in Genesis, 
so it’s linked very tightly to this story. 

Marduk, with His eyes 
and 
His capacity to speak magic words, 
goes out and confronts Tiamat, 
who’s like this watery sea dragon. 

It’s a classic Saint George story: 
Go out and Wreak Havoc on The Dragon. 

He cuts Her into pieces, 
and 
He makes The World out of Her pieces. 

That’s The World that human beings live in. 

The Mesopotamian Emperor acted out Marduk. 

He was ALLOWED to be Emperor 
insofar as he was 
A Good Marduk. 

That meant that he had eyes all the way around his head, and he could speak magick; 
He could speak properly. 

We are starting to understand, at that point, 
The Essence of Leadership.

Because what’s Leadership? 
It’s the capacity to see what the hell’s in front of your face, and maybe in every direction, and maybe 

The Capacity to Use Your Language Properly to Transform Chaos into Order. 

God only knows how long it took the Mesopotamians to figure that out....

The best they could do was dramatize it, but it’s staggeringly brilliant. 

It’s by no means obvious, 
and this Chaos is a very strange thing. 

This is a Chaos that God wrestled with 
at The Beginning of Time. 

Chaos is Half-Psychological 
and 
Half-Real. 

There’s no other way to really describe it. 

Chaos is what you encounter when you’re blown into pieces and thrown into deep confusion—when your world falls apart, when your dreams die, when you’re betrayed. 

It’s The Chaos that emerges, 
and 
The Chaos is everything it wants, 
and 
It’s too much for you. 

That’s for sure. 

It pulls you down into 
The Underworld, 
and 
That’s Where The Dragons Are. 

All you’ve got at that point is your capacity to bloody well keep your eyes open, 
and 
To speak as carefully and as clearly as you can. 

Maybe, if you’re lucky, 
You’ll get through it that way 
and 
Come Out The Other Side. 

It’s taken people a very long time to figure that out, and it looks, to me, that the idea is erected on the platform of our ancient ancestors, maybe tens of millions of years ago, because we seem to represent that which disturbs us deeply  
using the same system that we used to represent  
Serpentile, or other, Carnivorous Predators. 

We’re biological creatures. 

When we formulated our strange capacity to abstract and use language, we still had all those underlying systems that were there when we were only animals. 

We have to use those systems that are there. 

Part of the emotional and motivational architecture of our thinking, part of the reason why we can
Demonize our Enemies 
who upset our axioms, 

Is Because We Perceive Them as if They’re Carnivorous Predators. 

We do it with the same system. 

That’s Chaos itself, 
The Thing That Always Threatens Us—

The Snakes That Came to The Trees 
 when we lived in them, like 60 million years ago. 

It’s the same damned systems. 

The Marduk Story 
is partly 
The Story of Using Attention and Language to Confront Those Things That Most Threaten Us. 

Some of those things are Real World threats, but some of them are Psychological Threats, 
which are just as profound but far more abstract. 

But we use the same system to represent them.

 That’s why you freeze, if you're frightened. 

You’re a prey animal. 
You’re like a rabbit, and you’ve seen something that's going to eat you. 

You freeze, and you’re paralyzed. 

You’re turned to stone, which is what you do when you see a Medusa with a head full of snakes. 

You turn to stone. 
You’re paralyzed, and the reason you do that is because you’re using the predator detector system to protect yourself. 

Your Heart Rate Goes Way Up, 
and 
You Get Ready to Move. 

Things that upset us rely on that system. 

The Marduk Story, 
for example, is the idea that, 
 If there are 
 Things That Upset You

 —chaotic, terrible, serpentine, monstrous, underworld things that threaten you—

The Best Thing to Do 
is 
Open Your Eyes, 
Keep Your Speech Organized, 
and go out, 
Confront The Thing, 
and 
Make The World Out of It. 

It’s staggering. 
When I read that story and started to understand it, it just blew me away. 

It’s such a profound idea, and we know it’s true, too, because we know, in psychotherapy, that 
you’re much better off to confront your fears head-on than you are to wait and let them find you.

Partly what you do, 
if you’re a psychotherapist, 
is you help people 
Break Their Fears into Little Pieces
—The Things That Upset Them—
and then 
To Encounter Them One by One 
and Master Them. 

You’re teaching this process of 
Internal Mastery Over The Strange 
and 
Chaotic World.

Conan's Father:

Fire and Wind come from The Sky, 

from The Gods of The Sky. 

But Crom is Your God - 

Crom and he lives in The Earth. 

Once, Giants lived in The Earth, Conan. 

And in The Darkness of Chaos, They fooled Crom,

and They took from Him The Enigma of Steel.

Crom was angered. And The Earth shook. 

Fire and Wind struck down these Giants, 

and They threw Their bodies into The Waters, 

But in Their Rage, The Gods Forgot The Secret of Steel and left it on The Battlefield.

We who found it are just Men. 

Not Gods. Not Giants. Just Men.

The Secret of Steel has always carried with it a Mystery. 

You must learn its Riddle, Conan. 

You must learn its discipline. 

For No-One - No-One in This World can you trust. Not Men, Not Women, Not Beasts.

[Points to sword]

This You Can Trust.

"Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula" - BBC Radio Drama [1981 HQ]

Modern Times: Camille Paglia & Jordan B Peterson

For The King

 Converting People to Monarchism

 

 How do you go about convincing people that monarchy is the best way to go in a population where the older generation cling and revere independence and the younger generation are very apathetic towards politics? Should It be done by a creation of a political party to expose those ideas? 

Charles explains how he became a monarchist. 

We later talk about how people in general arrive at monarchist positions, and why there are seemingly no lady monarchists.

45 minutes on a single paragraph of Nietzsche's Beyond Good & Evil

“It has gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy up till now has consisted of — namely, the confession of its originator, and a species of involuntary and unconscious auto-biography; and moreover that the moral (or immoral) purpose in every philosophy has constituted the true vital germ out of which the entire plant has always grown. 

Indeed, to understand how the abstrusest metaphysical assertions of a philosopher have been arrived at, it is always well (and wise) to first ask oneself: "What morality do they (or does he) aim at?" 

Accordingly, I do not believe that an "impulse to knowledge" is the father of philosophy; but that another impulse, here as elsewhere, has only made use of knowledge (and mistaken knowledge!) as an instrument. 

But whoever considers the fundamental impulses of man with a view to determining how far they may have here acted as INSPIRING GENII (or as demons and cobolds), will find that they have all practiced philosophy at one time or another, and that each one of them would have been only too glad to look upon itself as the ultimate end of existence and the legitimate LORD over all the other impulses. 

For every impulse is imperious, and as SUCH, attempts to philosophize. 

To be sure, in the case of scholars, in the case of really scientific men, it may be otherwise—" better," if you will; there there may really be such a thing as an "impulse to knowledge," some kind of small, independent clock-work, which, when well wound up, works away industriously to that end, WITHOUT the rest of the scholarly impulses taking any material part therein. 

The actual "interests" of the scholar, therefore, are generally in quite another direction—in the family, perhaps, or in money-making, or in politics; it is, in fact, almost indifferent at what point of research his little machine is placed, and whether the hopeful young worker becomes a good philologist, a mushroom specialist, or a chemist; he is not CHARACTERISED by becoming this or that. 

In the philosopher, on the contrary, there is absolutely nothing impersonal; and above all, his morality furnishes a decided and decisive testimony as to WHO HE IS, — that is to say, in what order the deepest impulses of his nature stand to each other.

Unalone in The Dark

Megan Paul is 26. Like Jack and Michelle, she's very sociable and lively. She is blind and looks back now on a very lonely time at school, set apart by her disability and even more so by others' reactions to it. 

"I went to a mainstream, all-girls secondary school," says Megan. "It was OK for the first couple of years and then when girls hit their teenage years they become interested in makeup, magazines and how boys look - all quite visual things. I loved my books and animals, so I didn't have the same interests. I couldn't talk about whether boys were cute, so there was that natural growing apart." 

In lessons pupils would often work in pairs. When the teacher asked the whole class who wanted to work with Megan, there would be an awkward silence until eventually the teacher paired up with her. Sometimes she felt the staff set a bad example. 

"I would put my hand up needing help from the teacher and the teacher would ignore me or make inappropriate comments about me. Pupils learn a lot from adult role models at that age and they saw that the teachers didn't know what to do with me," Megan says. 

"I felt awful. My mental health was the worst it's ever been. I wanted to die rather than be at school. Then in Year 11 they agreed that I could do a lot of my work at home. I found that was much better than being stressed out at school and it taught me great study skills." 

Now Megan is studying for a master's degree and life has become easier, but she says that there are still aspects of her disability which can make her feel lonely. 

"As a blind person we can't make eye contact or use body language. If someone who can see comes into a room they will gravitate towards someone who smiles at them. I'm not smiling until I know that they are there, so they don't get any feedback from me. 

"The frustration is that I am confident enough to go up to people and chat, but I have to wait for people to come to me. It does mean the friends I have are really special though, because they're the kind of people who persevered. I appreciate the friends I have so much more because I don't have many of them." 

When Megan first got an assistance dog, knowing how many people love dogs, she wondered whether the dog might draw people in to talk to her, but she's found that's not always the case. 

"Being an assistance dog owner brings its own type of loneliness - a lonely-in-a-crowd scenario," she says. "If people start stroking the dog I'll use that to start a conversation, but quite a lot of people just walk off. Sometimes I feel I'm overshadowed by my dog. I know I'm not cute and furry but I do have something to offer." 

I asked Megan whether she has tried joining any clubs or schemes designed to alleviate loneliness. She would like to, but finds access can be a problem. "Meetups are awkward because people don't know how to approach me. I recently tried to join a walking group with my dog, but they wrote back and said I needed to find a group that walks slowly. I'm a fast walker. They should decide how fast we walk together. If I do go to a group, I'm in the corner and everyone swirls around me. But the more groups I could join, the better." 

As time goes on Megan has found that one solution is to turn to her phone. "As you grow, you develop coping strategies. If I feel really bad, now I drop people a message. I don't tell them I'm feeling bad, I'm just making connections and reaching out, so I can work through that feeling." 

With the high levels of loneliness among young people, a blog Megan wrote might be particularly useful for those with disabilities at school today. She includes tips, such as holding the door open for people in order to start a conversation. 

"I was so bored at school. A lot of people walked through without noticing, but even if you got a 'Thank you' or a 'Hello' at least it was an interaction. I wasn't able to go up to people and say 'Hi' because I didn't know where they were. So it's one way of getting noticed. It's nice to be seen as helpful rather than 'Here's the weird blind girl again.'" 

Another of Megan's tips is to talk to teachers as if they're real people, and not just your teachers. 

"Even as a teenager, if you're that lonely you don't care who you talk to. I remember talking to a teacher who told me her cat had had kittens. Afterwards I thought, 'That's one less break time spent alone.'" 

Megan says she believes not being able to see has made her kinder to others. "People with vision judge people on appearances and I don't, because I can't." 

It's possible that loneliness has made her kinder too. We found that people who say they often feel lonely score higher on average for social empathy. They are better at spotting when someone else is feeling rejected or excluded, probably because they have experienced it themselves. 

But when it comes to trust, the findings are very different. Although they may be more understanding of other people's emotional pain, on average people who say they often feel lonely had lower levels of trust in others and higher levels of anxiety, both of which can make it harder to make friends. 

Michelle can relate to this. "I sometimes feel that people are just being pitying by wanting to spend time with me. I do have trust issues and I think they stem from my anxiety. I think when you become lonely you do start to look inward and question people's motives. You find yourself wondering whether people spend time with me because they want to, or because they feel guilty."

Paulie : 

Friends owe!

Rocky :
Friends don't  owe -- 

They Do Because They Wanna Do -

You Owe Yourself.

Cut to the halls. Buffy and Cordelia are walking.

Cordelia: 

So, how much the creepy is it that this Marcie's been at this for months? 

Spying on us? 

Learning our most guarded secrets? 

So, are you saying she's invisible because she's so unpopular?

Buffy: 

That about sums it up.

Cordelia:  (exhales) 

Bummer for her. 

It's awful to feel that lonely.

Buffy:  

Hmm.  So you've read something about the feeling?

Cordelia:  (stops Buffy) 

Hey! You think I'm never lonely because I'm so  cute and popular? 

I can be surrounded by people and be completely alone.

 It's not like any of them really know me. 

I don't even know if they like  me half the time. 

People just want to be in a popular zone.

Sometimes, when I talk, everyone's so busy agreeing with me, 

They don't hear a word I say.

Buffy: 

Well, if you feel so alone, then why do you work so hard at being popular?

Cordelia: 

Well, it beats being alone all by yourself.

She continues down the hall. After considering that for a moment Buffy 
quickly follows.