The older I get, I’m realizing that loneliness is possible despite how many friends you have. I would call myself a gregarious introvert. I need to be alone to recharge, but I also need social situations so that I can come alive. Therefore, I have a broad network of the most fascinating humans that I interact with on a regular basis. If I’m bored, I have a smattering of friends who might be able to get together at the last minute to do the proverbial “something”. I have deep, long friendships where I can bear my emotional self and feel safe, and I can offer my love unconditionally in support of my friends. And all of this should make me not lonely.
Since my divorce, I have not been lonely. I have dealt with grief mainly. I have a lot of grief about feeling invisible and emotionally unsafe in my marriage, and sad that I was not good enough. I have a lot of grief about causing disruption and turmoil for our kids. I have a lot of grief about growing up in the church where I was taught to smother my real self. I grieve my own parent’s divorce, and the years of emotional neglect prior to that because my parents were so distracted with their own lives. I grieve that I don’t have a “home” – nowhere to go that feels like my safe, foundational place.
I have done a lot of work to keep this grief moving and to keep releasing it so that I am not lost in it. And despite all this grief, I have not felt lonely. Not even once. I craved the time to be alone and make my own decisions and do the 10,000 things I hadn’t been able to do during my married years. I spent time with friends, I reconnected with my family, I took up hobbies.
But quitting my job and starting to figure out “what next” has exposed a loneliness that I had no idea was there. I am lonely. The dictionary says, “producing a feeling of bleakness or desolation”. It’s the experience of being sadly solitary. It’s melancholy aloneness. And I think my biggest fear is to be solitary. We moved around a lot growing up. I never stayed at a school longer than 2 years. Sometimes it went ok at the new school and other times it was traumatic. I went to 4 different elementary schools. I switched high schools half-way through because my dad got remarried and we moved across town. Solitary is bad when you move around a lot. My fourth school was the worst. It was fourth grade and that’s when girls are starting to play popularity games and they get mean. I was the new girl and the others were relentless. I invited 10 girls to my birthday party that year and only one showed up; she lived a few doors down.
I believed that being alone means no one likes you. Being alone means that there isn’t anyone there to protect you. So, I have always made sure to surround myself with humans and keep myself very busy and connected. And I still do that, I guess. But what’s different now is that I feel lonely despite being around people a lot of the time. When we encounter major life transitions, we need a thriving support system so that we have someone to brainstorm with, people to challenge us, friends to encourage us when we lose our confidence. And for many of us, our partner serves as the anchor person that we feel safe enough talking to at length and know that they will continue to listen and care. I’ve discovered that without an anchor person, I have to break down the issues I’m experiencing, and put a social calendar together for myself so that I can spend time with enough people to get some of that support while also trying not to overwhelm the other person with my neediness. I leave most social engagements feeling like I talked too much, because I am desperately in need of support and connection.
I don’t have someone to meld spirits with, someone who’s there to lean on whenever because they are literally right there, I don’t have someone to vision a future with, I don’t have someone that will accept all of the love I have to give. And I probably never have had any of this. So, there’s the grief again.
And I don’t have an answer for this one. I don’t have a four-step plan or a magic cure that the internet provides so that you can get a dopamine hit and think all of your problems are temporarily solved because you read some motivational words.
I have some guesses and some things that I keep trying that I think that if I can get it “right”, I’ll find my way out of this hole.
- Trying to figure out how to love myself – There’s a lot of stuff about learning how to be your own parent, and I even thought about writing a blog post called “My personal quest to fall in love with myself” – but no matter how hard I try on this one, I don’t feel like I’ve made much of a drop in the bucket. I’m still my own worst critic. I relentlessly give myself a hard time. And I continue to feel let down by my parents.
- Experiencing my connection to the universe – I believe that we are all part of the collective divine. My consciousness chose to come into this life with my body and will continue to live multiple lifetimes after this. Therefore, I’m connected to everything. My sense of being alone is material, and all I need to do is connect spiritually and my feeling of loneliness will be resolved. I can achieve this relief through meditation, but the loneliness invariably returns.
- Investing in deeper relationships – If I can set better boundaries with people and spend my time with fewer people but deepen those relationships, then I might be able to ease my sense of emotional solitude. Find people who are also alone, spend lots of time with them.
- Surrender to the loneliness – This is a big one that I’ve been trying a lot. I’m lonely, so maybe the answer is to just be lonely – let myself feel it. The more I fight it and argue with it, the bigger it becomes and then it’s completely taken over my existence. If I can invite it in, let it sit with me, and continue forward with the loneliness, then I will organically move through it.
Maybe we are all just alone and we hide the reality from ourselves by remaining busy and partnered. Maybe true intimacy isn’t real. Maybe I’m going through this phase so that I can redefine my sense of self. But my favorite author, Pema Chodron, has this to say:
“Contentment is a synonym for loneliness, cool loneliness, settling down with cool loneliness. We give up believing that being able to escape our loneliness is going to bring any lasting happiness or joy or sense of well-being or courage or strength. Usually we have to give up this belief about a billion times, again and again making friends with our jumpiness and dread, doing the same old thing a billion times with awareness. Then without our even noticing, something begins to shift. We can just be lonely with no alternatives, content to be right here with the mood and texture of what’s happening.”