Abiding Loneliness
I hear people talking about loneliness and sometimes I want to scream. I realize people experience loneliness in lots of different ways, and that all of those experiences are real, are acutely felt for them. I also realize that many souls in this world experience a kind of loneliness I can’t currently imagine–loneliness in illness, loneliness in physical paralysis, loneliness during physical torture, loneliness in the face of a child’s death, loneliness inside of intimate or committed relationships. Loneliness in a marriage. There are all kinds of loneliness we avoid discussing, because we don’t even want to let them into our consciousness for a second. We’re a culture that desperately tries to drown out loneliness with noise and consumerism and distraction.
Maybe that’s why so many people are so lonely. It’s the loneliness of having to repress and sublimate loneliness.
Still, sometimes I feel exasperated listening to coupled folks talk.
“My partner’s gone for the weekend. It’s nice, but I’m a little lonely.”
“It’s weird this week because X is visiting her sister. I get lonely. Want to do something?”
“I’ll be staying with friends, so I won’t be lonely.”
It’s like loneliness is a virus one is not supposed to catch, something not worth feeling. But, worse, like aloneness is not worth feeling, like being alone even for a few days, even for a night, is…well, just kind of sad, especially if it’s optional.
Right now the people I can relate to most about loneliness are the people who are for the moment unpartnered. I mean no offense when I say this, but I think it’s one thing to miss one’s temporarily absent partner, and another to be unpartnered with no end in sight. It’s also an experience I absolutely would not trade. I wish more people had a chance to live through it to the point that they could learn to abide with it, to find strength in it, even to make a kind of constantly negotiated peace with it. I’ve found that when I stop resenting it, wallowing in it, blaming events, people, and myself for it, this kind of loneliness can be a great gift.
Before I started posting tonight, I was sitting on my front porch on this warm summer night, plucking away at Patty Griffin on my guitar (the queen of the lonely wail), watching my neighbors come home in couples, wondering whether I could describe my loneliness when it comes. It’s hard because it has so many different faces. Tonight it’s the restless version, the part that, after coming home from a perfectly pleasant dinner with two good friends, doesn’t know what to do with the time before bed. Partnered, this would be cuddling time, or chatting about the day time, or both of us maybe taking care of minor tasks time, or just staring at something meaningless on t.v. together time. An hour or two you get to take for granted when you’re together with someone.
Alone it’s different. Yes, there’s listening to music or watching a movie or reading, which I often do. There’s getting a little more work done, which I do a lot during the school year. There’s talking to friends on the phone, which I do enough to keep current with at least a handful of folks. Cooking, cleaning, straightening up, laundry, watering the garden, writing–all things I do. I became something of a master at this during my post-doc in Ithaca when for the first time in my life I was not only lonely and missing my long-distance girlfriend, but socially isolated, particularly the first year (the year following 9/11). Every social contact I had was partnered and/or unavailable and visitors were rare. I learned to deal, to entertain myself. I taught myself to cook and to quilt, for chrissake, and I revised a book (well, at least the first round). I got well acquainted with Ally McBeal, and (thank god) Sidney Bristow. Paco the cat and I had a lot of deep conversations.
Distractions are fine and keys to survival. But I think eventually enough loneliness forces most of us, including me, to eventually just find a way to sit with it. Breathe it in, exhale it. Take a bath in it. Light candles in honor of it. Cry. Hide under the covers. Lord, I remember how hard it was to get out of bed on those icy gray mornings in Ithaca. Who was really going to care if I didn’t? (Thank God Maria and Kate finaly came along!) Why not write gloomy poetry? Stare into space. Listen to the clock tick. Think about the color green for several hours.
When I don’t let it drag me down, though, loneliness becomes a space where things eventually sprout. Awarenesses, thoughts, ideas–even an occasional epiphany. Silence stops being a thing to fear and becomes a source of richness. I always remember this after I’ve spent several days in extreme busyness or around people; I start missing the silence of being alone, and that was not true before I learned to abide loneliness. I’m not saying I have any interest in being a recluse or a hermit; I’m just not that girl. But I’ve had enough loneliness that I no longer have any interest in compromising to avoid it. I don’t want, for example, to go to a party and scam on someone I’m not going to be interested in in the morning. I’d rather be a little lonely. And this is, in the scope of my life, maybe a bit of a revolution (even though scamming was never a huge habit for me). In this round of loneliness, this last year, I have written a lot, and deepened a spiritual practice that makes a big difference in my days.
I’m laughing because in the time I’ve spent drafting this, my phone has rung half a dozen times, the cats have come in and out of the room, meowing to see what’s up, and I’ve apparently received a couple emails. Who am I to feel lonely?
Still, there’s that stillness in the back of it all. And it’s uneasy sometimes, but no longer bad.
