I don’t know where you’re going, but do you have room for one more troubled soul?
That’s a line from the Fall Out Boy song Alone Together. The title itself is an oxymoron. How can someone be both alone and together at the same time?
There are a lot of ways to interpret it. Some people hear it as being about drugs. Others think it’s about two people in the same physical space, but still feeling isolated and apart.
That idea feels familiar. During the pandemic, my family and I were together in the same house, but often living separate lives. We ate in different rooms. We passed each other in the hallway with only transactional conversations. We were together, but we were also alone.
Sometimes, that distance can feel easier. It can be exhausting to be emotionally available all the time, especially when there is no break or separation. But if that becomes the norm, it’s a dangerous road. The road to ruin, as the song puts it, “and we started at the end.”
There’s another way to look at the phrase, though. You can also be physically alone from the rest of the world, but emotionally together with someone else. That’s how I often feel with my son. We are separate from much of the world—by circumstance, by hospital stays, by the realities of epilepsy—but in that separation, we are together. Us against the world. Not really alone at all.
That’s the tension at the heart of the song. It’s also the tension I feel as a parent and caregiver. Lonely, but not alone. Together, but sometimes separate. Finding connection even in isolation.
Let’s be alone together. We can stay young forever. Scream it from the top of your lungs.