On the Matter of my loneliness

“Do you ever get bored?” asked a guy I was seeing the second time he visited me at my place.

“No, I don’t” was my honest answer. Yet the “but I do get lonely” concluding part of my response felt too bitter a pill to admit to a guy I was still trying to explore if this was going to be a dating/relationship or yet another situation-ship. Definitely not words I have been able to share with anyone, well except maybe cryptically on Twitter. In fact, the need to write this piece has been gnawing away at me for quite some time but somehow I have resisted. There is another level of pain that comes with the vulnerability of talking about your loneliness.

But the reality is that I am lonely.

This is a feeling I have been managing, with crushing levels of despair, over the last three years. A feeling that became more rapid as my journey into solo entrepreneurship grew. Just the nature of getting older, having moved countries a couple of times in the last decade and now having many of my best friends scattered across the globe has certainly played a part.

I still remember the first time I stumbled upon this realisation, it was a Friday and I had messaged a friend to see if she wanted to meet up for drinks or anything really. Her response about having already made plans with her work colleagues made me realise that was what had being missing in my life for quite a time. Being a solo entrepreneur feels like being the sole driver through a seemingly never ending road trip. Though there may be times when others jump in for the ride, they often disembark, sometimes at a stop that comes far too quickly. Overwhelmingly for most part of the journey, you are driving through the terrains of the lands with no passenger chatter for miles and miles ahead. Now anyone that has being on a road trip (or watched a road trip movie) knows the best part of the journey is the ability to share the unexpected bumps and pleasantries with another person.

The matter of my loneliness becomes more apparent on the weekends and holidays when my daughter is away. It has being further exacerbated in recent times with the devastation of confronting my twelve year old daughter’s suicidal ideation thoughts. Nearly a month ago, the words “you need to take her in to be hospitalised” were the most terrifying sentence I have ever heard uttered. Over the next three weeks, I came to a scary realisation that depression was a thief. A thief that had slipped into our lives and taken my ‘Mini-me’s joy away, leaving behind a soul that was almost unrecognisable to me. I first shared the suicidal notes I had found with two people I knew, both of whom still work in mental health services I myself had walked away from five years ago. One, a close friend whom I have known for over two decades, who refers to my daughter as her niece responded that she was out of town. She called a few days later but following that I did not hear from her agai until I announced my daughter’s hospital admission to our WhatsApp group a couple weeks later. Another close friend told me a few weeks after my disclosure of what I had being enduring, she felt I “needed to be left alone until I was ready to talk”. Somehow the burden of getting the comfort and support I needed during one of the most terrifying moments of my life was put back on me.

Thankfully a social media friend of mine came into town and spent part of her vacation with me. This turned out to be an unexpected blessing as her arrival came shortly after my daughter’s discharge from hospital and consequent departure to spend the first few weeks of her summer holiday with her father and siblings. I had more social activities with her during the first four days she was around than I did in the preceding month before her arrival.

That only a handful of my friends have picked up the phone to call and check up on both me and my daughter since then just further compounds how lonely and isolated I feel. How do you even begin to tell those closest to you “FYI — my daughter’s depression and suicidal thoughts have only sought to exacerbate the feelings of loneliness I have been experiencing for far too long”. I guess writing it as an essay to be shared with strangers on the World Wide Web feels so much easier. But then, perhaps I do so because I have had more of these ‘strangers’ checking up on me and/or showing concern for my daughter’s wellbeing than my own family and friends.

It’s an incredibly painful place to feel all alone. Even more so when you find yourself having recurring bouts of loneliness over several weeks, months and years. It becomes quite soul destroying when the very act of trying to keep up appearances that you are doing fine becomes even harder to muster.

And so it remains that on the matter of my loneliness, I feel ill equipped to finding a lasting solution.