Life Is Not Like Instagram: That lonely feeling
From social exclusion to embarking on a quest that leaves you in unusual territory, loneliness hits us in so many ways.
The concept of loneliness has always enthralled and, in later years, bemused me, but I’m as much a loner as a social animal and more and more over the years have enjoyed my own company. It wasn’t always this way.
I adore the idea of setting off across the ocean by myself in a small boat. That time to myself is romantic, seductive. Plus, of course, taking someone along just to avoid being lonely — that’s the worse reason in the world! I’d much rather argue with myself than with someone else, at least that way I always half-win!
There’s nothing worse than being ill, sick or injured in a foreign country with no friends nearby. That can suck, big time. Pressing the button and booking a return flight immediately is the natural reaction, but not doing so can sometimes offer the biggest reward of your life and recognising this makes solo travel so rewarding. Like an injury, an accident, that unforeseen event that changes your path, treat the concept of loneliness like a story and dealing with it becomes easier.
I can’t remember the last time I was lonely — it just seems like a modern-day word to explain not being at peace with yourself, but I see the exception being valid when you’re travelling to escape something. It’s always easier to run, but unless you’re Usain Bolt whatever you run from always catches up with you.
When on the move, I’ve made friends everywhere but the goodbyes come just as frequently. I felt this the most when paddling the Mississippi, people who live by the water always seem to have more time for others and as a result you develop a deeper bond even in a short period of time. The next morning it’s another hug goodbye. It gets tough, yet another slight lowness as you head into the distance, but there’s always someone new to meet downstream, down the road, round the bend.
And this has been my solution. For all of the downsides to this life (three weeks of daily blogs testifies to the amount of battles I feel have defined my last decade) I’m ultimately positive. My nature is to engage, to solve problems as fast as they arrive. If I feel the early stage of loneliness I go find some people to talk to or play with — I’m no longer the shy kid who didn’t have the courage to approach strangers, I can crack a joke or flash a smile and pick up a conversation worth having. But I should say, these communication skills aren’t innate for me, I learned them along the way — these tools to fix the problems that plagued my childhood.
Like anything, work on it and you become more adept, whether it’s kicking a football, writing, making friends. Time and commitment brings accomplishment.
We are all capable of being comfortable within ourselves and with our own company, which makes the feeling of loneliness so devastating when it rears its ugly head. It’s a signal that we’re not happy, that change needs to come and that from a place of defeat we need reserves of strength that seem so far removed from now, in this pit of despair.
And it’s so easy to be lonely in a crowd. So easy to be overlooked. So easy to feel unecessary. Unwanted. Insignificant.
Digging deeper, setting out on a unique journey (this can be metaphorical) can be the loneliest place of them all. Not having anyone to share the understanding. The wider the chasm the more vulnerable you feel as you step across, a void opening up waiting to suck you in. That feeling of needing to hide away. To escape. To do anything but face up to the fear.
In mid 2012 I spent 58 days swimming down the Lower Missouri River. Swimming uses every ligament, muscle and ounce of energy you have, but the physical challenge of this journey was tiny compared to the mental. Although I had a team with me my head was buried deep in the water much of every day, my own world. There are few people who can understand what it’s like to swim a great distance; to be so close to the outside world yet so removed and separate. I lost myself on that journey.
There were days when I couldn’t cope, when team squabbles took hold and I was too far gone to manage them. I cried more on that trip than on any other. I couldn’t manage all the difficulties, couldn’t even swim some days. I sat on my raft and drifted downstream, lifeless. I have to thank the three members of my team who took me to the finish line, Em, Ness and Ben revived me just enough to paw through that murky water to the finish in St Louis. I pulled myself from the water with the reality that my world for two months had been so different from any other human on the planet. It took months and months afterwards to get back to me again, but the toll of those endless dark hours permeated for longer. I can swim really well now, but I wouldn’t do that journey again. That was a lonely place.
Perhaps being lonely is the only fear that is strongest when you’re facing it. The hollow, dark, sad trap of sorrow that comes with missing someone desperately, being eternally misunderstood, that feeling that you’re the only person in the world that gets you. Being in a place that you don’t want to be, the gripping, pinching feeling in your gut that something needs to change.
For me, those loneliest periods came when I was at school. I was bullied for years, often behind closed doors, occasionally in front of a group. The jeering. Hair, voice, mannerisms, anything. Those toilet bowls looming — the flush. I’d close my eyes and hold my breath and not struggle. Amazing what you grow to accept when it becomes common place. But I never quite accepted that I was an outcast, I just misinterpreted what it meant to be picked on. Sometimes I found a weaker classmate and bullied them myself, never physical, just words — it was my only sense of power. I’m not proud of it, kids are stupid. I was stupid. And desperate.
Heartache besides (and luckily this didn’t come until much later, when I was more able to deal with pain) my darkest days were at school, between 13 and 16. I would lay awake in bed for hours, often in a room with 3 or 5 others. I’d stare at the slats of the bunk above, wishing they’d break and fall upon me. Those car rides back to boarding school were drives filled with dread. I dreamed that we’d have an accident just so there was a legitimate reason not to go back. I’ve never told anyone this, not even my parents.
Twice in my first year at that school I took myself from bed and dressed fast and silent, calculated. Tiptoed out of the house, along the path beside the sports fields, up onto the bridge. It was a good twelve metres down to the road. Perhaps not high enough a fall to kill me, unless I went headfirst, but I didn’t like that idea. Falling in front of a moving car made more sense, I’d wait for the faster ones and estimate when I’d have to jump. Anything, I just need this feeling to be over. This is loneliness. Only one way out. The last time I went up there I was on the rail. I climbed down and vomited. It was still there the next morning. I walked right on by on the way to breakfast.
And then one morning during my second year one of my tormentors killed himself. The most popular guy in the year, hanging there from a tree. 14 or 15 years old, gone. Found in the early hours by a groundsman. Having been caught drinking the night before he was told that he was to report to the housemaster the next morning. He died terrified and lonely. He chose death over punishment. The destruction of a person taking their own life, especially someone so young, I slowly wished away my darkest thoughts amidst the feeling that even that boy who put me through so much trauma, I could see there was good in him. I knew then I couldn’t remove myself from everything, that there must be another way out of the darkness. It’s easy to say that suicide is cowardly, but if you haven’t been inside the mind of someone willing to go that far you have no idea.
I’m sweating and choking up a little, writing this. Remembering everything that happened and the way I used to feel. And I get that this blog will probably be a shock, especially for those of you who know me now. The positive, optimistic, go go go let’s do this me. The me you know is still the same guy, all of these feelings happened a long long time ago and they’re not coming back, I’m pretty sure of that. I like being happy and wanted and loved and I feel like there is so much to live for. Maybe I was due that swing after a couple of unhappy years, you gotta go low to appreciate the highs.
And, you might be amused to know that one evening a couple of years ago a good friend of mine introduced me to her new boyfriend. He was a couple of years older than me and when our eyes met there was instant recognition. He’d put me through hell at school, that bloke, and I gave him a really hard, satisfying, bone-crunching handshake, all the while looking him in the eyes with all the confidence in the world. ‘Nice to see you again,’ I said, and I almost meant it. I’m pretty sure he didn’t mean to cause me harm, he was just being a kid surrounded by other kids.
I hope none of you reading has or will ever be in that low a place, but if you are please tell someone. Don’t keep it cooped up. You are not alone, you are amazing! You will do things in your future that will be good for so many people. Believe there is more to life than this sadness, trust that it will all change. It will get better. All superheroes have their haters, but your time will come, I promise you.
Read the introduction to my Life Is Not Like Instagram Series, which includes a link to all articles published on this topic
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