Loneliness
Adults combating loneliness
How you ever felt a deep loneliness for no particular reason, or in random moments where you should feel anything but alone? And then accompanied by an inability to articulate why you feel that way?
Lately I have felt those things deeply. And with it this pull to speak but unable to, and then a yearn to write from inside this place I thought I buried. I used to write a lot, mostly poetry, sometimes outlines to short stories or novels I never finished. The last thing I wrote was a poem in 2020. That was until two weeks ago when I started writing an outline for a book. There has been this almost insatiable need to write something, anything, since. And for the first time I can feel myself embracing the loneliness, but can sense the warmth of the sun rising on the horizon.
I am new to blogging, but not necessarily new to the concepts of creativity becoming a bridge for community, and a way to express deep, dark, buried emotions I am convinced we all share. Anonymous is how this new adventure will start, but who knows where the road may lead. But having something to relate to in people is vital. I am technically (barely) a millennial but consider myself more akin to the Gen X humans. I am an analytical thinker, mostly of the “Type A” personality, and I have worked in healthcare for over 20-years (definitely future topic). And I come from a big family, with two children of my own.
Writing used to be a passionate hobby of sorts, but then I grew up, or I changed, or time called me away. Probably all the above. It is hard to admit but the last few years I have felt hollow, and lonely, but have only recently accepted this truth. Why am I lonely? What have I missed or am missing? I don’t really know. But I know somehow writing is at the heart of it. Ignoring the pull toward a journal or a new book has come crashing down on me this week as a “apocalyptic winter storm” has hit and I am cooped up inside. I have finished two books and started a third in that many days and now the flood gates have burst.
Everyone feels loneliness at some point in life, maybe we don’t want to admit it. It doesn’t feel nice, it can feel isolating, it can have a concrete reason like loss and grief, or it can be deep and guttural for no reason at all. I have felt both kinds deeply and painfully. But even in loneliness you don’t have to be alone. Know that you are not alone, there is always someone willing to listen, willing to cup your tears in their hands, that you are stronger than you know and can combat the sadness that can come with loneliness. In the darkest and loneliness moments of my life it was medically prescribed Zoloft and bi-weekly therapy that saved my life. It was trial and error, to find that combination to help me emerge from that depth, and that was just a few years ago. I have since come off medications and have taken a pause from therapy because frankly it’s expensive. But the lessons I learned are still there, and I think that was where the pulls to write first started trickling back.
This blog could amount to nothing, but today it’s a start toward a passion that was never fully buried by loneliness, grief, and depression. Maybe there is healing for me in writing again, and maybe the words will mean something to a reader who needs to hear they are not alone, that what they feel is something others have lived and feel too, that there can be purpose in the feelings that cause us turmoil like a wave crashing in, receding, crashing in again. I intend to use writing to ride through my wave of loneliness and bring me home, what will you use?