I just read a piece on loneliness at Alternet. I have seen this subject brought up before and many times it is dismissed as a first world problem. It’s always been a problem for me. I cannot think of a time when I have never felt lonely. Even when I lived in military barracks, surrounded by people all the time. As I read the story that outlined the health dangers of it, and then progressed to the commentary, I was struck how people wanted to find that silver bullet that explained it all. To my knowledge, no complex, human social problem is simple. Loneliness is no exception.
I have been lonely for lots of different reasons. I am lonely right now.
1. I have been lonely because I am an opinionated female. I am sure others can make this sentence and replace female with any other minority status—or add one or more. When people made it abundantly clear that I was expected to be express my feminine identity in a certain way, that is counter to my personality, the end result was a feeling of innate rejection and that was followed by loneliness. This kind of loneliness made me feel defensive and at times unsafe.
2. I have felt lonely because I am not wealthy. Sometimes when you are not wealthy, you work more. When you aren’t working, you are tired. And even when you are not tired, you might not have the expendable income to accompany friends to a concert or an amusement park or a shopping spree. It wasn’t the worst loneliness I have ever experienced, it was more a side effect of people not being self aware of income gaps.
3. I have felt lonely because of my veteran status. People make assumptions about female service members. They can’t help it I suppose. It’s not something I want to talk about with strangers. But I feel dishonest if I fail to answer. I have felt terribly lonely when people tell me their unvarnished opinion about female service members. Sometimes I think that people have some kind of weird psychic gift where they blurt awful stuff out, not knowing they are talking about you. Once a chaplain’s wife said something about how women in the military who were sexually harassed brought it on themselves. She had no idea that I had been in the military or that I was one of those women. I avoided that base for a long time and the people associated with that social outing after that. This has also happened to me at various other random places, even in a Doctor’s office once—by the doctor.
4. When I turn on the television or radio, or overhear conversations that proclaim that America is a Christian nation. I am not a Christian. And given some of the nastiness associated with that political stance, that makes me feel very unwelcome in my own country and it has for 2 decades now. Sometimes it makes me feel unsafe as well. Because the groups that espouse this ( to me ) are hate groups and supremacist groups who are looking for a way to legalize a violent and exclusive religious belief. What they are really saying is “My way or the highway”. What more is there to say then?
5. Encountering mean, people. Maybe on any other day they are wonderful. But lately I encounter people who are not social, not talkative, or worse, attempt to bully others verbally. This has happened in several instances especially with teen girls and their mothers. I am glad to see the issue of girl-bullying being addressed in the press, and how it goes on with adult females. I will just say, that it needs to be addressed more.
6. When I go online and feel caught inbetween the ire of militants on either side of the political aisle. The best example is the fact that we are secular homeschoolers. But to most people who are religious homeschoolers, we might as well admit to worshiping Satan. To people who are very liberal, well to many, we aren’t really liberal or not liberal enough or we wouldn’t be homeschooling. That means I don’t talk to anyone after a while. It's one of those issues where the unique circumstances of our lives are not taken into account and we are assigned an identity and motives based on assumptions made by the pure geniuses online. It must be nice to have all the answers. After a while you just don’t say a damn thing.
Loneliness in a crowd is when you realize that in order to avoid having to justify every aspect of your life, that you have to just keep your mouth shut. That you shouldn’t be who you really are, because if you do—you will be publically humiliated, punished, ridiculed and ostracized. Maybe that wouldn’t happen, but after it happens a lot, even if only online, you start to anticipate it. So you shut up everywhere.
But there is one more aspect of loneliness that puts the final nail in the social coffin.
7. No one has time for anyone else. Everyone works. Even people like me who are not paid for our labor, work. But most of my friends, even people who make more money than we do, who have a higher level of education and supposedly better benefits, rarely have time to socialize. I have friends out there somewhere of a like mind. I just never get to see them, because everyone is too busy overworking themselves. There is very little time for adult interaction and adult play. Because these are seen as frivolous and unnecessary. Maybe its time as a society that we rethink that silly notion.
8. Nowhere to hang out when we do have time. There is nowhere other than churches to just hang out in or at, to meet new people. And even when we go to parks where children play, adults who do not know each other, rarely talk to strangers. Maybe its different where you live, but here, most places roll up their welcome mats between 8 and 10 pm. Most people get off of work between 5 and 8 pm. There are no places to just hang out after hours to get a piece of pie and coffee—not good ones anyhow. And those that exist with their tv dinner pies are now the places where people go to sober up. So if you don’t drink and party well, you can’t even go somewhere noisy and pretend you aren’t lonely.
I have watched this phenomenon unfold for years. I grew up where everyone talked to everyone else, especially strangers. But then I realized that this was a hold over from the Depression era and WWII era folks, many who are dying off quickly now. The people after them just didn’t inherit that kind of social curiosity or friendliness. I know because I did, and I feel the absence of it keenly. I have found that people mistake this friendly quality for gullibility or dorkiness. And sometimes people write me off, for talking to people they wouldn’t be caught dead sharing air with.
If we don’t talk—how will we ever solve problems? How will we ever reach a consensus? If we constantly shut people up and shut them out—how does that accomplish anything other than a festering wound where a life should be?
10. I believe the biggest driver is fear. The fear might be of terrorism or crime, and on a personal scale, the fear of humiliation or ridicule, or of being different. Some people refuse to reach out because they fear getting hurt, they have a fear of committing to a friendship and fear perhaps also having to accept a person who has some views they would stringently avoid online. Whatever the source of the fear, the end result is the same.
We often blame this loneliness as a family on where we live. But secretly I wonder if this is just everywhere. I mean the alternet and similar stories hit it on the head for us, and those stories are not the product of our hometown. That makes me wonder, because if I moved, would it do a damn bit of good? Or would I simply be moving somewhere where I don’t know even one person at all, even if it is only as a passing acquaintance? What cult would I have to join this week to find face-to-face acceptance? What part of my life would I have to ignore, to hide, to make myself more acceptable?
And then I ask myself: Why bother?
Which is more important? Accepting yourself or getting others to like you?
You know the funny thing is, I visited another country, where I was not a fluid language speaker and I did not feel lonely. People were curious and friendly all at once. Something like I remembered from childhood. Granted it was exhausting, pantomiming my story, because of the language barrier, but it was a refreshing, if not nostalgic trip to a world that used to exist in the U.S. too.
Occasionally I get to just talk to random strangers. Something I enjoy most of the time. But those random encounters no longer end with meeting a new friend for life. That just doesn’t happen anymore.