Sorry Not Lonely
This one’s going to be tough, and I sure hope it doesn’t come off the wrong way. To all the people feeling lonely out there: I love you. I want to understand what’s going on with you and support you in your time of need. ?But I’ll tell you what else: I am fucking on to you.
I’m on to you. I don’t buy it. Unless you’ve successfully grasped the the fact that loneliness can be temporary — say if you’ve just moved, recently lost a relationship or are temporarily questioning your social circle — I don’t buy that you’ve done all that you can do to escape loneliness. I want to be direct with you about this rather be sympathetic and treat you like a weakling because I know you’re not weak even if you don’t.
To begin, you might notice that twice now, I’ve used the words, “feeling lonely” and that is because there is a distinct difference between “feeling lonely” and “being lonely”. “Being lonely” does not exist, but the pain and trauma tied to loneliness, which is aggressive enough to severely prolong the feeling of loneliness tricks many of us into thinking that loneliness is a state of being rather than a state of feeling. Loneliness, like all of our feelings, is fleeting. For those who have allowed it in their lives for a particularly long time, this fact is likely to have long since been forgotten, and loneliness instead seems to be a life-long condemnation as he or she that feels lonely has such a difficult time finding people that understand them.
This is largely because whether you’re feeling lonely or not, it’s easy to forget how difficult it is for a person who isn’t feeling lonely to identify a lonely person. Hell, Jay Gatsby was the loneliest bastard out there and he threw the sickest parties around. Loneliness can take a dramatic toll on those who have tons of friends, those who are married, and those with humongous families. The relationships or social interactions that someone has doesn’t necessarily have any correlation with how lonely they might be feeling, and this misunderstanding between those who feel lonely and those who don’t only causes an extra divide — making it that much more difficult for loneliness to be broken down and reveal its true colors as a passing feeling.
That’s because the root of loneliness does depend on how we’re perceiving our interactions with those we come in contact with. Emphasis on “perceiving”. It’s key to understand that for as often as those who are not feeling lonely fail to see when someone is feeling lonely, those who are feeling lonely fail to see when someone who isn’t feeling lonely would want to accept them, support them, and form a bond with them if only they knew. But again, these missed signals only perpetuate the trick that people feeling lonely play against themselves, because the objective truth is that the world is full of people and full of paths leading to people that would or already do want to be in their lives in a meaningful way. The same way someone who is married with children may perceive those relationships in such a way that they’re somehow unfulfilling, someone might perceive a stranger as someone that wouldn’t want to open up to them and form a bond with them. The more one falls victim to this trick, the less trusting and comfortable one feels when they do have social interactions, thus perpetuating one’s feeling of loneliness.
The stronger this feeling becomes, the more distanced someone feeling lonely is from healing, as the anticipated pain of once again failing to make a connection with someone gradually turns into playing things too close to the chest, avoiding risk and ultimately avoiding life. The belief that we have to look after ourselves with rising intensity, and therefore the particular focus on one’s own needs, grows stronger. This is how the spiral of loneliness works: the basis lies in the assumption that what you bring to the table isn’t worthy of or isn’t capable of forming a connection.
As always, there’s good news. Upon the acknowledgement and recognition of your own loneliness, you don’t have to choose to stay on this path with these assumptions that have only supplemented your upset and will continue to do so if you allow them to. To view loneliness in a different light, to grasp the fact that the truth behind your social interactions may not have been what you assumed them to be or what you felt entitled for them to be can serve as an opportunity for you to be the one to break the wall. Break through your loneliness and truly start to form meaningful connections with people by not assuming that they don’t care about you or want to have you in their lives. Confide in others about your loneliness, don’t continue to resist it or make an opponent out of it. You’ll be surprised to find out that people love when you show them your vulnerable side, because we all want to feel comfortable being vulnerable with others and you opening to them shows them that you trust them. That’s how beautiful relationships begin. You’re probably going to realize rather soon that there are a lot of people who feel that same sense of loneliness and have been begging for someone to share it with just as you have; someone to appreciate them for who they are and grant them the peace of mind that loneliness is an extremely common bind that people share even though our perception of it is precisely the opposite.
Loneliness is one big fucking illusion. It’s a trick. It’s a lie. It’s devastating and destroying lives, and it doesn’t have to be. Be a part of the solution.
