The loneliness of the solo traveller
Kalgoorlie, Monday 7 May 2012
Crushing loneliness. It happens. It’s a curse of solo travel. It’s not something that creeps up on you stealthily and envelopes you gently. Instead, it slams straight into you like a freight train, just as fast and just as unrelenting.
Like the sun dropping beneath the Indian ocean on Mullaloo beach, you slide from bright and buoyant to dim and deflated within moments. The coffee you were drinking tastes bitter; the next item on your agenda no longer seems fun or interesting or worth visiting; you can feel your heart thumping so raucously in your chest that if it were to burst through your ribs and sprawl, bloody and desperate, on the table in front of you, you’d be neither surprised nor care that much; and putting one leaden foot in front of the other seems so infinitely beyond your capabilities that you remain transfixed and immobile. You’re alone. That’s it.
You might be dressing for dinner and the thought of another night alone, at a table with no one for company and with no one to share a bottle of wine becomes entirely unbearable. You might be standing at the top of a hill, looking down on the most engrossingly beautiful landscape but without anyone to share the view, the climb seems a pointless endeavour and the view loses its shimmer and sparkle. You might be in transit from one town to the next and suddenly you’re not sure what the point of it is because who’s going to experience it with you? You might see something funny but not be able to share the laughter; you might want to do something outrageous, but it’s meant for two; or you might do something and realise that it would have been so much better if someone in particular were with you to enjoy it.
The world is suddenly black and heavy and you lose your balance, your sense of self.
Thankfully, as quickly as it swoops down and engulfs you, you reorient yourself, take a breath, and carry on. You immerse yourself in your book over dinner; you get to spend as long as you want photographing your vista; you make conversation with 90 year old women on the bus who are going on a cruise with friends, because they can; you Tweet the funny things; you mark down those things you can’t do alone for another trip; and you tell someone that you miss them. The positive suddenly becomes shiningly, pointedly obvious and you remember that you are whole and complete.
It’s a timely reminder from the universe: you’re in the midst of an incredible experience–something remarkable and beautiful, where even the dull or frightening or awful moments are to be treasured–but you still have something to go home for.
