on loneliness
THIS BLOG PIECE WAS PUT TOGETHER BY THE ANSWERS OF ROUGHLY 200 PEOPLE TO QUESTIONS POSED ON INSTAGRAM - TO THEM, THANK YOU <3
Is it possible to write about loneliness without making reference to the COVID-19 pandemic? Loneliness is not a new feeling so I am inclined to say yes. Yet I find it difficult to avoid thinking about how we may have approached this conversation differently 2 years ago, before lock downs and quarantines and social distancing and work from home. While I did not explicitly ask about the relationship between the COVID-19 pandemic and loneliness in this series, I wonder if they are, from here on out, intrinsically linked, in the same way that conversations about things like health and hope and safety might be forever colored by these past two years. All of this to say: this is not a piece about loneliness experienced during or as the result of the COVID-19 pandemic. But maybe, just in the back of your mind, you might think about how the pandemic has, inarguably, changed the experience of loneliness for all of us.
So why loneliness? Why now if not to talk about its relationship to the pandemic? The explanation is a simple, if a little selfish, one: I have felt lonely lately (read: this year). Even just typing that feels scary. It feels embarrassing and, in many ways, like admitting to a personal failure. But when polled, 68% of us declared that admitting to our loneliness shouldn’t feel embarrassing. You all make me feel brave.
Back in the spring, when I first started to think about writing this piece, I thought I had a rough idea of what I was going to say, of what this ramble would be about. But, not uncommonly, one question in the poll series re-directed my interest significantly. As a result, many of the questions I initially asked are not entirely relevant to the conversation I want to have here, now. But since I asked them, and I believe the answers are meaningful and hold weight in a larger conversation about loneliness, I am going to share the answers below –
60% of us do things alone all the time
96% agree that doing things along feels easier in some places than in others
89% argue that there are things we do every day that make us feel lonely (WFH, we’re looking at you)
89% maintain that it is not always possible to tell when someone else feels lonely
(and because Keegan’s essay is one of my favorites) what is the opposite of loneliness?
Feeling of not wanting to be anywhere else than where you are now
Feeling fulfilled by other people
Contentment
Belonging
Loving / Caring connection
Community
Good company
Wholeness
Inclusion
What really got me thinking though was the response to this statement: my loneliness is my responsibility.
37% agree
Comparatively, 81% say happiness is a personal responsibility, 90% say anger is a personal responsibility, and 51% say sadness is a personal responsibility. In each of these examples, majority rules, our feelings are our responsibility.
What is it about loneliness that feels different?
Does loneliness feel like something that is inflicted upon us? But other people certainly have the power to make us happy or angry or sad and yet we maintain we have some semblance of control over those feelings.
Maybe it has something to do with the idea that loneliness often doesn’t feel like a feeling at all. Instead, it is experienced as a state of being. It is what you are rather than what you feel.
Or maybe it makes the most sense when we think about the opposite of loneliness – company, care, connection. These are hard things to reach for on your own.
My hunch is that loneliness feasts on insecurity in ways happiness or anger or sadness do not. That loneliness is embarrassing in ways happiness or anger or sadness is not. That to feel lonely is to feel a sense of rejection. To feel unseen. To feel back-of-mind. To feel forgotten. Or to feel taken for granted.
Who is responsible for our feelings? And why does assigning blame, even if to ourselves, matter? Because I think it does matter. Can we be responsible for some of our feelings but not all of them?
I do not have these answers. And, after all of this (extended time feeling and thinking about loneliness) I am not sure that I have a better understanding of loneliness or how to pull oneself of out of it. For now, maybe the important thing is that we’ve stepped into a conversation about loneliness together, at all.
I want to close with two things –
A tidbit a friend shared with me about her changing definition of loneliness that feels entirely true and important:
It seems like as I’ve gotten older, loneliness is not just physically being alone but more a nostalgia for a time/feeling/people in the past. I think it’s part of your early 20s that people don’t really talk about. Sometimes I feel lonelier when I’m surrounded by people than when I’m just chilling on my own watching ducks in the park. it’s like my whole concept of loneliness is changing which is scary … but also exciting
and this: ways to heal loneliness
FaceTime a friend
Make plans to look forward to
Do something you love, talk to someone you love
Hold conversations with yourself (i.e. journaling or taking a walk with no music)
Books, reaching out to people, coming to know that being alone can be liberating
Ask yourself: (1) why does it hurt me to be alone? (2) how can I find joy in my own company? (3) what is the kind of connection I want from others in my life and when is this need met?
Reach for poems or a good book or story
Cuddle with a pet
you should read:
the opposite of loneliness by marina keegan
notes on a nervous planet by matt haig, specifically his ‘priorities’ chapter
you should listen to:
this episode of unf*ck your brain