Loneliness as a Progression
By Kate Spencer and Grace Johnston
“A discrepancy, a gap, if you will, between the connections that you need and the social connections that you have. It’s by definition a subjective term. What it also means is it’s different from objective terms like “isolation…”
– Dr. Vivek Murthy
Something that resembles a dark cloud, a feeling that removes the warmth or light within the soul. A loss of connection with one’s self and others. The longing for connection and love. It is never desired and hardly recognized to those who are in experience with it. It can scar and take, especially in a world that is recovering from mandatory 2-week quarantines. It feeds off of globalwide isolation policies, where any location shares one commonality: loneliness.
Loneliness didn’t begin during the pandemic and it doesn’t seem to have an end. People either notice it and try thriving off of the darkness, or they stay ignorant to the feeling in denial with it and hope ignorance will remove its scarring feeling.
Researcher Dr. Vivek Murthy has come up with a communal definition from his series of interviews as well, “I feel like I’m carrying this entire load all by myself. I feel like, if I disappear tomorrow, nobody would even care. I feel like I’m invisible.”
Beyoncé’s Lemonade
Lemonade shares Beyoncé’s story of her transformation from a state of isolation into a rebirth of self. Lemonade shares the vast support she finds in women and generations of black mothers.
Chapter 1 of Intuition begins with this claustrophobic, anxious feeling of expected loneliness as Beyoncé suspects Jay-Z is cheating. Chapter 4 Apathy and chapter 5 Forgiveness touch on the meaning of loneliness, specifically, after betrayal. Beyoncé whispers, “Her shroud is loneliness, her God is listening. Her heaven would be a love without betrayal.” She finds herself covered with loneliness as a stain from betrayal.
This pain is healed by support from females is a show of sisterhood and admiration. Unity is vital for survival. Support from others awakens feelings of happiness, confidence, peace and harmony. In loneliness, our egos grow unabated, and we let division and hatred separate us more and more.
Hattie’s instructions on how to make Lemonade is what unites these women: turning nothing into something.
Toni Morrison’s Beloved
“There is a loneliness that can be rock. Arms crossed, knees drawn up; holding, holding on, this motion… Then there is a loneliness that roams. No rocking can hold it down.”
This is how Toni Morrison personifies loneliness in Beloved. One can either isolate within their only loneliness. In modern day, this can look like that isolation of never leaving one’s house, never socializing with others in any sort of interaction. The alternative loneliness that Morrison suggests is how one chooses to push away from others by constantly running and avoiding the pains brought on by risking new human interaction. In modern day, this may look like picking up and leaving one’s home to just run for a new place, a new alternative than confronting one’s problems and growing from them.
Beyoncé’s Scared of Lonely
Beyoncé — Scene Six: Scared Of Lonely (Live at Wynn Las Vegas)
Morgan Parker’s There are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé
Morgan Parker’s book There are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé is a poetry collection on the experience of black womanhood. It explores 21st century black American womanhood and its complexities including isolation. Parker’s poems confront modern media, consumption, feminism, and Blackness.
In the poem “The President’s Wife,” Parker questions if loneliness is cultural. In an interview Parker speaks on black American loneliness. She shared how she was “trying to understand the connections between the history of black women in America, the weight of it, and my own neuroses, deep sadnesses.”
Parker uses Beyoncé as a pop-culture reference because she is a model of perfection that black women strive toward. Beyoncé exemplifies glamor, beauty, and confidence.
In an effort to heal idolatry, Parker wrote “There are more beautiful things than Beyoncé: self-awareness.” Self awareness is one way to avoid this state of loneliness. Embracing or even acknowledging imperfection is a way to avoid idolatry.
Parker’s writing is loud, bold, and raging. This allows her audience to feel relief and comfort in her raw, typically unspoken thoughts. Parker allows the struggles and the messiness of life — with a particular focus on black womanhood — to breathe.
Loneliness & Supportive Reads
- Together by Dr. Vivek Murthy
- Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown
- Codependent No More by Beattie Melody
- Podcast by Dr. Vivek Murthy and Brené Brown on Loneliness and Connection
