The last time I wrote about loneliness (check my post on einsam), I got torrents of well-meaning texts, and phone calls from friends asking if I was doing okay mentally. Never mind that the intent behind the post was munificently about being stuck in places in one´s memories that one has to give up because it is shared with others. In that context, the post was about fleeting and staying memories with lovers, friends, and family with some memories being more painful than others, the puzzling feeling of who gets what, and whether we remember things the same way; with similar emotions and feelings.
Today´s post is going to focus on all the other stories behind loneliness we often forget or more precisely, the stories we gloss over because we think we should be bigger than the emotions we feel.
How we think we should be able to find happiness outside of other people especially if we fancy ourselves a person who shouldn’t really need others to be happy and fulfilled. The stories trauma has defined about not needing to depend on anyone to prevent ever being hurt ever again.
The story of loneliness I will chronicle here is an assemblage of moments I have experienced as others recount their journeys and encounters with loneliness without even meaning to share. It is a collage of perceptions unsaid amidst all that is said.
I was in London when a friend mentioned to me in the middle of an ongoing conversation saying, “Nobody talks about the loneliness that comes with feeling alone in a marriage. It is better to be single than to experience this.” I know that without trying too hard, a lot of us can unpack the depth of this narrative.
We can all resonate with this new sort of discomfort. To be with the idea of what you want, only to realize it isn´t all that it promised to be or that you want differently or even that you´d rather not be where you find yourself. Maybe it is not even within the context of a marriage or long-term relationship, maybe it is with an opportunity you once chased only to find it in isolation devoid of the zest of your desires.
There is a loneliness that comes with looking for a missing face in an ocean of people but with a divide of eternity. The loneliness that comes with the suffering of loss. As we grief, we keep trying to find them in everything even when we know that nothing will ever be the same again.
Should I share about the loneliness you feel when you are amidst people who are not your people? The everyday story of an immigrant, sojourning in a new world, not as belonging in the now but not being able to return home; because home is now where they find themselves and not where they used to be. The very home that keeps evolving even as they wander in the life they seek but are not even sure they will eventually want.
No one talks about the loneliness that comes with being with someone who doesn’t love you in all the ways you crave but you stay anyways because you are not strong enough to walk away. So you accept the broken pieces, the fragments, as you rationalize that no one is perfect. You wonder if there is more, specifically, if you can ever have more, so you do what is best, you settle, saying “Half loaf is better than none” but what about the aching part of your soul?
No one talks about the loneliness that comes with some memories that just won´t fade, the hurt ever breeding beneath each smile. The pile upon pile of new problems that comes just because you live and no one else can understand because on some level it is all in your head but it is how you know how to live…
No one talks about the loneliness that comes with abuse, with hurt, and pain, loneliness born out of shame and guilt, insecurities, and consequences of tough decisions. Loneliness born out of failure or of success, the choice to do better and seek better because you’ve finally decided that you deserve better. The loneliness that comes with waiting for your dreams to catch up to your reality. The loneliness of unmet desires.
I don´t think we keep these stories hidden because we are incapable of sharing. I think it is that there are some burdens that only certain bodies can inhabit. I think it is also because loneliness is a journey that requires courage and the stability of our individuality.
In some rather rare occasions that we can share, we often struggle with the uncertainty of sharing the load with a person who also has their own burdens and who may not be able to carry the weight as much as we need to feel relief without feeling like the burden we are trying to offload.
Sometimes, we are simply silenced by shame… We are ashamed of the needs we have that despite how far we´ve come, we are not sufficient in and by ourselves.
In the struggle of loneliness, it is important to admit that seeking companionship is not a weakness, it is a part of living, to want to feel love and experience love in others, and in a community is an existential part of our individual happiness. We have to feel honour in sharing the weight, to realize that healing is in all of us, the weight you bear may be difficult for you to lift but easier for another to handle because you just may be the balance they require and when the loneliness is one that you alone must bear, to accept that even that too shall pass.
We are only strangers the first time...
Till next time,
Dcconoissuer.
Connoisseur of Memories 