Lessons in Loneliness

I can't recall a time loneliness has ever approached me as gently as it has recently.

I could source the reason for this emotion on many external factors, one of them being blatantly obvious, but to do that would feel like missing the point. Loneliness is not an emotion that's foreign to me as I've felt it for most of my life. Loneliness and I could even have been considered close friends in the past, but it has never risen within me the way it has recently.

In the past, its arrival has been violent, triggering, has caused me to lose my balance in the sea of my emotions and become swept up in the current. It has led me to reach out for hands that I didn’t really want to hold me, has led me to vulnerably share wounds that I’d later wish I’d kept secret, caused me to see red flags as simple flags and not as the warning signs that they were. Loneliness and I could have been considered close friends in the past because of how often we connected, but our connection was anything but healthy.

As that was the loneliness I was used to, what I felt this week took me by surprise. The arrival was quiet, gentle, simple. As easy as it was for me to realize that I was hungry, it was that easy for me to realize that I was lonely. I had been doing my hair absentmindedly, thinking about hundreds of other things besides my hair, when I felt something begin to move around in my heart space, a slight heaviness that came with no warning but without destruction. I looked at myself in the mirror and simply thought, “I’m lonely.”

Being what’s considered introverted, it hasn’t been easy for me to meet people whom I feel I genuinely connect with. Friend isn’t a word I toss around lightly. There were many people that were present in my life that were never considered friends for years, simply because it didn’t feel like the connection warranted that title yet. Possibly due to my introverted nature, or pickiness depending on how you see it, there haven’t been many people whom I've met that I feel I’ve truly connected with on an emotional and mental level.

The beginning of this year seemed to show potential for that to change. I felt optimistic about discovering new connections, putting myself out there, allowing myself the space to open up to new people. Everything honestly appeared to have been going well, the internet had become a tool I never thought I'd use in order to find like-minded people, and I was releasing some anxiety about connecting with people where I live currently. Then everything changed in March.

I flowed with the shifts fairly easily in comparison to how I could have reacted to them, and I was hopeful that things would return to normal within a month or so. But then a month became two months, two months became three, and so on and so forth. Still, though, I wasn’t too disheartened and was doing my best to keep a level-head as things continuously shifted around me, and my plans became more and more uncertain.

Now being in the fall months, I’ve relinquished the prospect that I’ll be going out and finding tons of connections in person. I’ve partially relinquished the prospect that I’ll be finding tons of connections online because there’s a part of me that feels like that's pointless at the moment. But rather than imposing pressure on myself to do something with this loneliness that I realize I’m feeling, I’m acknowledging it as an opportunity to further understand myself and what I genuinely want in connections with others.

It’s easy to remain in or pursue connections because of history, because of security, or out of obligation. We’ve all done this in some capacity, allowed a relationship to stay in our lives longer than necessary. If we allow it to be, loneliness can be a teacher for us, can help us find clarity on what kind of relationships we want in our lives based on our past experiences. This is how I’m choosing to see my loneliness at this moment in time, as potential opportunity for deeper understanding rather than some shameful emotion that needs to be drowned out or distracted from.

If you choose to view your loneliness as a learning lesson, there’s potential for you to come to a deeper understanding of what you truly desire and deserve in your connections. Loneliness can help provide clarity on past relationships that didn’t serve you, and even on current ones that don’t.

If you’re feeling lonely at the moment, ask yourself what kind of connections do you truly desire to have in your life? Are the ones you currently engage in a reflection of that desire? What can you do to ensure your future connections reflect that desire?

Even an emotion as heavy as loneliness can be can help us better our connection to ourselves and to others.