THE SPECIFICITY OF LONELINESS


I’ve thought a lot about loneliness. I’ve even done my primary research on the subject. Paradoxically, being alone is not necessarily loneliness. The difference between the two is in the quality of the experience. I often enjoy being alone; I do not enjoy feeling lonely.

I’ve discovered there are a variety of states of loneliness. There’s an existential loneliness – a sense of “nobody will ever really understand what it’s like to be me” – that none of us can escape. There’s a generalized loneliness that can be remedied by going to church, or to class, or to a party where you get together with other people; even going to the mall can serve to remind us that we do not have to be alone.

Then there’s a more specific kind of loneliness that’s embodied in missing a particular person, or place, or state of being that is gone forever; I’m lonely for my friend Barry who died recently; I’m lonely for my cabin in Morro Bay that burned down; I’m lonely for my lost youth. There’s a quality of terminal longing in that kind of loneliness.

The worst kind of loneliness is to be sharing a bed with a spouse or lover where good feelings no longer exist. However, after a divorce or breakup there can be a perverse loneliness for the illusion that kept one in a bad relationship for way too long. For myself, divorce became necessary nineteen years later when I realized my loneliness in the marriage was rooted in my feeling that his relationship with me wasn’t personal – or personal enough. I’d become “the wife” – just an interchangeable female unit.

Temporary loneliness can be poignant with hope as it is presumed to be a fixable thing. I’m lonely for Ron, my youngest son, from whom I’ve been long estranged. I’m lonely for winters spent in Guatemala. I’m lonely for peace of mind, or a state of grace.

Dwelling on loneliness of any kind is a trap, a futile comparison game, a solitary road to hiding out in the past, a long damp slide into the swamp of self- pity and depression. So, what’s a human being to do?

I happen to be a do-it-myself woman. In my crying-on-the-freeway days when I couldn’t see where I was going I could sometimes pull myself back from the edge by reciting to myself what I could see out of the car windows: “There’s a blue Honda in front of me; the light is red; there’s the sign for Southcenter.” This white-knuckled reality orientation could get me safely home.

After that point it was back-to-basics self-therapy. This action program consisted of three parts: 1. Exercise: take a walk or go swimming. 2. Talking: phone somebody, and therapists do count. 3. Write in my journal or write a poem or write an essay.

And, here it is!