What got me was her 1974 letter to the Guinness Book of World Records. Specifically, what got me was that she wasn't looking so much for fame as she was a companion. Made me think of how easy it is to find yourself lonely, whether you have any obvious outward "deficiencies" or not. Certainly, it's easy to imagine how a 7-foot-7 woman would feel so lonely that she'd reach out to the Guinness Book as a dating service.
We in the West who are middle class and up have been rightly pegged as having an oversized sense of entitlement, and that extends to relationships. We've taught ourselves to think that finding the perfect mate isn't just a possibility, it's a birthright. So we search out the most beautiful, the most sexually satisfying, the kindest and the most intellectually stimulating partner, someone who shares all of our hopes and dreams and sensibilities, and we refuse to settle for anything less than all of this, packaged together in one person. Meanwhile, thousands of people go their entire lives without having even the most basic of these needs met.
Okay, so maybe Sandy Allen ended up in a fulfilling monogamous relationship, or satisfied her physical desires with a long list of sexual partners. The article doesn't say. And maybe this entry is coloured just a little by recent developments in my own personal life. But the point still stands: life comes with no guarantee of love, and those of us who have experienced it should remember how lucky we are.
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