This is my last post on loneliness for a while, but I wanted to close out the topic with some context for myself. I’ll be moving on to other topics!
Before I started writing these last few posts, I hadn’t given much thought to loneliness itself. I have felt lonely on an off throughout my life and had bad years where I was lonely most of the time – it’s been a constant presence in my life. But I tended to think of it as something I had no power over. And because I had no power over it, and because it’s super lame, I would just not pay attention to it as soon as it was gone.
I would ignore loneliness until it came roaring back into my life. By the time I figured out I was lonely, then I was LONELY. And LONELY ME makes terrible decisions and is actually kind of a bummer to be around. And when I am cranky all the time and impulsive, then people want to deal with me less (heck, I want to deal with me less!) and the loneliness increases to — what’s bigger than all caps?
Writing these posts has made me think that if I can recognize loneliness early when it is still lower case “lonely” then maybe I can keep it from becoming LONELY (or work to change the upper case to lower), then it’ll probably make my life better.
This is right-sizing loneliness.
How to right-size loneliness
When I thought about right-sizing loneliness, I thought of this silly cartoon story which I will now share…
Society gives us really harmful messages about loneliness. It tells us to stay away from lonely people because there is something wrong with them. So, I have to hide my loneliness away and not let anyone see it.
And, much like a pity party, when I am isolated in loneliness, it becomes a loneliness party. The longer and more deeply I am lonely, the more guests I invite to my loneliness party.
The guests that want to come to my loneliness party are not the happy guests. They are the angry, shameful, sad-full guests.
They sow discord and rile each other up. And they make it hard to focus on anything but what they are saying. Which makes it hard to connect with other people. Which makes the loneliness party extend for longer. The longer the loneliness party happens, the more I think that loneliness is all these things combined. This is what LONELY feels like.
And when I have this feeling of LONELY, I may mistake small loneliness triggers for this and instead of feeling slightly down, I may suddenly feel LONELY. When I am in this highly activated state, I am highly motived to make it stop by finding people/situations that will immediately fix my loneliness.
Unfortunately, I’m also carrying around these phantom sadness, shame, resentment, anger and envy emotions which makes me erratic, impulsive and maybe a little mean.
Trying to meet people while feeling like this is going to undermine all my friendship efforts (we’ve all met people who are running around like this trying to make friends with us, it’s very uncomfortable). And even if I do find people to temporarily keep it at bay, it’s just sitting in wait until I feel a twinge of loneliness again.
But, there’s a different way to look at this.
Loneliness in itself can be much more neutral.
It can just be an indicator.
It can indicate that certain things are missing from my life. It doesn’t automatically include all the other emotions (including grief if I am mourning a loss of someone specific).
If I can remove all the other guests from my party, then I can focus on just the loneliness. So I can see the specifics of my loneliness. And then I can see what I can do to remedy my loneliness.
How to live with (some) loneliness – a conclusion of sorts
Loneliness is an important part of being human.
As pack animals, loneliness indicates that we have strayed further from the pack center than we are comfortable with. It is a protective mechanism that can be a catalyst for changing behaviors and priorities.
As someone who is more of a loner than a joiner, I have a complicated relationship with loneliness. I think I naturally will live right on the edge of loneliness because I do require much more time alone.
But maybe I can experience my loneliness with much more equanimity if I know it is meant to be there and I can understand the edges of it.
Loneliness can be that empty gas light in my car. It comes on when the tank is getting low, and lets me know that if I ignore it, there may be bad times ahead. But, for years, I didn’t think much about until my tank was empty and I was stranded on the side of the metaphorical friendship road in the middle of the night. I should have been paying attention earlier so I could manage my loneliness by preventing it, right-sizing my reaction to it, and accepting when loneliness is here to stay for a while.
It’s easy to talk about this like it’s something that can be solved in a weekend. But for people without an existing or positive social structure, or who naturally tend to fall to the wayside of groups, this is incredibly difficult.
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