on loneliness
I remember a couple months ago, maybe sometime in November of last year, a friend of mine asked me, “How do you make yourself stop feeling so lonely?” He was speaking in general terms. He had been going through a rough time for a variety of reasons, but I couldn’t exactly pinpoint what made him ask that in this moment. It wasn’t uncommon. I often admired how easily it seemed for him to express exactly what he was thinking, no matter how uncomfortable people might feel about it.
So, how do I stop myself from feeling lonely?
At that time, I really didn’t know how to answer him. It felt like an accusatory question that I wasn’t prepared for… and it wasn’t exactly a very intimate space in which he asked me. We were at work, people walking to and fro while joking around, a co-worker sitting next to us while we waited for job assignments that would not come. Lulls in time do that to you, they make you think about what surrounds you, like loneliness, love, anxiety, ambition, perhaps grief.
When my friend asked me this I scanned my brain for something to say. Something that he could feasibly do and that would be honest, instead I lied.
“I don’t know… I don’t normally feel lonely.”
Then I gave him a slew of activities that could help: exercise, going to the movies, hanging out with friends, diving into a new project.
Though I was lying, I didn’t know that I was until I moved away months later.
I’ve been living in my head for the last three months. I’ve been traveling to unfamiliar places and finding solace in my own thoughts, even the ones that drive me to not want to get out of bed. I do though, everyday at ten in the morning.
I am living with my aunt and uncle in a cookie cutter suburbia fifteen minutes from the Las Vegas Strip. Every day we eat breakfast and dinner together (no need for lunch, we just snack). We watch the news. We talk about the family and how everyone is doing. We talk about what to stream on Netflix. I show them how to pay their bills online. They watch their telenovelas while I read my books beside them. We get to know each other.
My uncle makes me laugh with his vendetta against the pigeons that land in his backyard. He spends the day staring out the window, on the lookout, and when he sees the usual gang, he stands up and goes out to scare them away. He’s built a slingshot and aims rolled up orange peels at them. He also found an old contraption he used to use while cleaning out the garage. It consists of a rubber ball attached to a long rope. He swings it above his head and throws it at the wall the birds perch on. All these methods he uses to keep them off. “They carry diseases! They could have the corona,” he says in reply to my question. I’ve started backing him up and will run out to shoo them away when he’s busy with something else. They don’t much respond to me. They recognize my uncle though. They fly away the second the screen door slides open and they see the potbellied, mustachioed Mexican man.
My aunt makes sure I have everything in the world I could possibly need. After a trip from Costco, she came back with a bag of popcorn that matches my height, five more bags of coconut chips I mentioned liking, and two different options of dental floss because she noticed I was almost out. Before the quarantine got more serious, we went out to get a TV for my room because she felt like I shouldn’t be watching movies on my 13-inch laptop. At this point she’s cooked me every meal I’ve ever liked after she interviewed me about all my food preferences within the first week in their home. I’m more than grateful and more than overwhelmed by this level of hospitality. But I also know, she’s a very anxious and restless woman. She’s also recovering from grief, our family having lost someone that was like a son to her only a few months ago. I let her mother me and I make sure to listen, console, and tell her stories to connect with her the best I can.
Despite this, I try to spend time alone. I lock myself away in the office for most of the day. I try to write, on days I can’t I just stay in the office anyway and watch YouTube videos. When I come out before dinner I work out, alone. Go on runs, alone. In the evenings, I choose to lock myself in my room and watch movies or read. Alone.
That’s where the lie comes in.
I don’t normally feel lonely. I don’t feel it because I’ve been lonely since I was a child. Loneliness is my default. Sometimes it hurts, but most of the time it doesn’t, it just is there, and I keep doing the things that make me happy despite its presence in my life.
Truth is, I feel very lonely lately, yes the pandemic is going on but I’m also miles away from where I used to call home, in a place I didn’t expect to be. I miss friends, I miss family, and I miss complete strangers at a coffee shop. Yet, I miss being completely alone most of all. I’m sure there’s a logical explanation for this, but right now it makes no sense to me. Maybe the explanation will hit me in a week.
It just goes to show that you can’t equate loneliness with having people around you. It goes further than that. It’s what makes me fear that even if I develop a group of friends that are there for me through thick and thin, if I find a romantic partner, if I have a family of my own someday, I’ll resent it because my normal is being alone. I crave it all the time, even when it hurts to be alone.
So, what do I do?
I try to be.
I try to be there for others. I try to be honest with others and myself. I give things a chance even if it pushes me out of my comfort zone. I give people a chance, even if my walls are up the entire time. I tell people how I feel. I try to balance a social life with a life of independence. Even if right now it means texting people when there’s a voice in my head that says I don’t matter. Calling people even if it means I spend the entire time listening. I try to be me in this life I’ve been handed. I try to be present and not dwell on what isn’t happening and why it isn’t happening – or worse what happened months or even years ago and why. Sometimes that means exercising and going to the movies and hanging out with friends and diving into a new project. I try to be happy with myself. And I try to be happy amongst good people.
All that is not easy. But it’s worth trying because trying is living.
Favorite movies to watch about trying through the loneliness:
-Frances Ha
-Magnolia
-The Skeleton Twins
-The Edge of Seventeen
-The Darjeeling Limited
-Beginners
-Where the Wild Things Are
-The Last Black Man in San Francisco
