What Loneliness Feels Like

I was feeling like a sorry Eleanor Rigby the other night and was seriously considering adopting a cat. I hate when I have an attack of loneliness. Loneliness goes deep and it’s a multifaceted emotion. Being lonely inspires sadness, feelings of abandonment, failure and insecurity. Sometimes you’re just horny and you’re frustrated not to have anywhere to put that sexual energy.

The realization that you’re lonely often hits you at different times- like when you go to bed alone and there’s nothing to hug except your pillow. Or when you’re home on a weekend night and you call everyone you know and no one wants to hang out. The worst is the holidays when you have no one to eat lavish turkey dinners with. Everyone else has plans with their significant others, their families, their laughing happy children and you, in your desperate solitude just end up with a bunch of random people who you don’t really know just to be around other people’s energy.

Loneliness can sometimes grip you when you make your once a month trip to the grocery store (only because you ran out of toilet paper). You decide to buy cereal -cause you’re too lazy to cook for one and the only meal you might eat at home is breakfast anyway. Then you buy a couple of cans of red bull because you think you may need it to mix with some vodka in the unlikely event that your phone actually rings. You meander down the milk aisle and think- “Oh I need cheese’” but the only kind of cheese you can find at the local Park and Shop is Kraft ‘Singles’. Suddenly it occurs to you how pathetic you are- buying a year’s supply of abrasive toilet paper, lazy breakfast items, energy drinks and processed ‘Singles cheese’. It’s not even real cheese and it will rot away along with the rest of your year-old condiments and moldy leftovers that have been in your fridge for ages. God, you need someone to take care of you but there’s no solace except in that half-drunk bottle of wine in the fridge that may or may not be vinegar by now. Fuck it- you say- you’re going to drink the rest of the bottle as soon as you get home.

Then you get home to a silent flat, you start thinking about your ex and how much you miss him and what was so wrong with you that he would rather spend long nights drinking with his pals and passing out at homebase at 7am when you were right there in bed waiting for him to have sex with you. The feelings of rejection and abandonment wash over you. You feel so sorry for yourself, tears well up in your eyes, glass of alcoholic vinegar in your hand, and the river of tears involuntarily flows. Then it occurs to you that you felt lonely even when you had him and that you sometimes can’t escape loneliness- even when surrounded by others.

What can you do now except accept the feeling, let it wash over you and have faith that fate will lead you on the right track. I felt this way more times than I can remember.

I actually have an image that I call to mind when I start feeling like I’m dying of loneliness. One time I was scuba diving in Thailand and we took a bumpy speedboat ride upwind to this remote dive spot. It was rough seas all the way and I was scared to jump off the boat when it finally anchored. I dove in and we backpedaled to the dive spot. The sea was so choppy I was swallowing seawater the whole time. I decided to put in my regulator and just go below the surface.

What did you know- the visibility was crystal clear and there was a beautiful forest of pink and purple corals. There were seahorses, cuttlefish and schools of marine life darting around as if dancing to Beethoven. I felt like I was in a televised aquarium.

Above the surface, I felt anxiety, fear, uneasiness. Below the surface, all of that melted away as I took in the wonder and stillness of the scene unfolding before me. It was magical. Just then my gorgeous Swedish divemaster took my hand and pointed in the distance. A massive whale shark was gracing our presence! It was nothing short of divine providence.

Whenever I feel like I'm drowning in a sea of loneliness- I remember that day and I say to myself- there’s always respite beneath the turbulent surface. For some reason, that day and those images remind me that contentment and happiness comes from within- not from any external sources.

Just then, the random play on my Ipod started playing “Sitting here in Limbo” by reggae master Jimmy Cliff. I really felt like the universe was talking to me and I just knew from the bottom of heart that everything was going to be ok. There’s always the calm after the storm and many times there’s also magic.

Sitting here in Limbo
Waiting for the tide turn.
Yeah, now, sitting here in Limbo,
So many things I've got to learn.
Well they're putting up a resistance,
But I know that my faith will lead me on.

Sitting here in Limbo
Waiting for the dice to roll.
Yeah, now, sitting here in Limbo,
Still got some time to search my soul.
Well, they're putting up a resistance,
But I know that my faith will lead me on.
 

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