After reading Jenny Lawson’s book ‘Furiously Happy,’ I feel responsible to share my own secrets. But I don’t think secrets is the right word. More like things you can only assume that only YOU have experienced because you’ve never heard anybody else talk about it. We need a word for that because it’s seen too much in society. Like it’s not necessarily always stigmatized, just not talked about, or maybe both.
Anyways, I wanted to talk about loneliness. To start, the technical definition of loneliness is:
“Sadness because one has no friends or company”
And that’s just according to Google; therefore, it’s a very surface-level definition. Of course, everyone has their own definition, but since I’m writing this, here is mine: (This is more like a few attempts at defining loneliness.)
“Feeling as though you are trapped inside a bubble made of one-sided glass.”
“As if you are the only person on the planet even when 8 billion people inhabit it”
“Being stuck a mile away from people mentally even when you are right next to them”
They all suck. If you want a good, relatable definition of loneliness, scroll a bit when you search up the definition, and they tend to have some deeper stuff that will probably take less time to cover what I’m about to attempt to cover.
you have to be alone to be lonely, alone is a state of physical being. While loneliness is a state of mental and emotional being. you don’t have to be friendless or not have relationships. It can be that you don’t connect with the people you are around; I find that it sucks more when you connect to some level but still feel a frustrating amount of distance. You can feel lonely in a room of people; it’s just a matter of who you are with, and how you connect. Some people ARE lonely because they don’t have close friends/family/relationships. There are so many reasons one can be lonely, but I’m going to share my personal perspective and experience with loneliness.
First, I would like to start off with the fact that I am an introvert; I prefer alone time to people time for the most part. BUT that does not mean I don’t ever want to be around people or connect; I’m sure plenty of you reading can understand. Being an introvert and being lonely is not an easy balance and definitely a frustrating one. Having to balance your lack of social energy and the desire to not feel loneliness is not ideal. Moving on, My experience with loneliness is pretty closely tied to my depression, in the same way eating lots of candy is tied to a stomachache. In the past year or so, loneliness has slowly crept up on me. You would think that someone would be sad when dealing with loneliness, but my first emotion was resentment. Why can’t I just be alone in peace without the biological need for social interaction? I do still feel this; biology can be a pain in the ass, but I’ve come to terms with it and learned how to work with it. To me, socializing is like eating your broccoli; it may not be fun, but it’s good for you. (in healthy amounts.)
Through covid I lost my more extroverted self, leaning more inwards for entertainment and support. After covid, in sixth grade I started to show some more prominent signs of depression, and eventually in seventh I would get diagnosed with major depressive disorder. That period of my life was very social. I had lots of friends. Lots of drama and plenty of conflicting feelings. At the time, whenever I went through a depressive episode, I would tend to reflect my feelings inward, (to the best of my abilities), and keep doing my thing. As you can imagine, this was not healthy.
A downside to having so many friends is that you have a higher chance of having shitty friends, well, if you don’t choose carefully. As you could have guessed, not all my middle school friends made me feel good about myself.
This impacted my self-esteem and led to a more pessimistic view of people. That caused me to isolate myself more through seventh and eighth grade, and by the time I was graduating from eighth grade, I was sick of most of my friends. So in high school I stopped talking to most of them. I kept the people who made me feel good about myself and distanced myself from the ones who didn’t. My plan for high school was to lay low and take care of myself, along with getting good grades. I did all of that and I also decided to join the swim team. At first I regretted not talking to old friends, even though they made me feel shitty. but now, halfway through freshman year, I think it was the right choice.
Even though things are working out, I am confident in my decisions. Along with not having a depressive episode for a month or two, at the time, I felt empty. I spent hours journaling about what this feeling was and landed on loneliness. If someone had told me that they were facing what I was facing at the time, I would have; At the time, told them to spend as much time as you can with people and don’t give yourself time to be alone.
And maybe in some situations that would be the right advice, but for me, I don’t think it would have been helpful. So I didn’t fight it; it was uncomfortable, but eventually I felt more at peace with it. I believe that if loneliness is something you start to fight, you may have already lost. And also I’m not an expert; please talk about this sort of thing with a professional if you need help. I do still feel lonely, every day a sprinkle at least, but it’s gotten better the more I accept it. I find time, when I have energy, to be around the ones I love, and when I’m tired, I give myself a break. I hope that by writing this, someone who felt the same way I did would feel less lonely.
I do hope I’m not the only one who has experienced this.