i've been lonely my entire life

i can write about my depression. i do it without a second thought. i do it because my disease even has a fancy medical term — dysthymia — and my disease requires medical treatment. it’s beyond my control, you see. more than that, decades of research and countless papers and medical journal articles have documented effects and treatment of depression [even, to some degree, the cause].

loneliness, on the other hand, doesn’t get that much. it’s regarded as an individual problem — that is, the individual is expected to heal his own loneliness. and let’s not get into the social stigma of loneliness.

on second thought, let’s.

from Lonely:

“So much ink has been spilled about the need to not judge the depressed or socially anxious person, and to not see emotional problems as indexes of flawed characters, that many people don’t notice that these misconceptions — mood as character flaw, the sufferer as somehow off — are still alive and well when it comes to loneliness. Loneliness is still judged harshly in our society, and it’s the trick of balancing this judgment against their own experience that lonely people have to confront at every turn. The lonely, in other words, have to do battle not just with their state, but with the very loud and widely communicated sense that there’s something wrong with them for feeling it in the first place.”

*

i’ve been lonely my entire life. my secret shame — easier to admit than depression and bisexuality and infidelity: my life is, if nothing else, [un]charmed.

few people understand this, or can comprehend what i mean when i say such a thing as “i’ve been lonely my entire life.” many people dismiss it as the histrionic rant of an anti-social man; i don’t blame them since, to this point, i’ve done a poor job of explaining the loneliness. or what it means for me. or for you, the reader who tries to connect with me. for you, my lover. for you, my parents and siblings. for you, humanity.

loneliness, on the surface, is a social malady. humans are social creatures — we need each other as much as we need sex and food and water and oxygen and sex. something goes awry and haywire in us when we’re disconnected from other humans — when we can’t connect.

connection is achieved through intimacy. and what is “intimacy” but the energy between me, you, and trust?

i trust few people. i find it hard to trust people. i can’t explain why. i haven’t experienced childhood trauma which would prevent me from trusting people. well, no trauma i can actively remember. anyway, without trust, there is no intimacy. no intimacy? no connection. i’ve been lonely my whole life.

alone in my marriage[s].

alone in college.

alone in love.

alone in artistic collectives.

alone while surrounded by friends and family.

and i said something to the effect of, “something goes awry or haywire — when we can’t connect.”

i don’t think much of myself. i don’t deserve love. i don’t deserve happiness. i feel lonely because i’m unworthy of other people, of connection, so there is always space between you and i — the space which should be filled with intimacy.

those are my thoughts when i’m lonely — like right now, two days before Christmas.

but i fight on. i look for answers. and my lover said, “read Lonely. . . . it helped me” and i reached for the book because i believe in lovers and literature. i’ll believe in anything, short of religion [buddhism excluded], to end this loneliness which, as i read and finished White’s memoir, i understood as a lifelong battle, like depression and accepting my bisexuality and infidelity. so goes the [un]charmed life.

Lonely told me i’m not so alone. in White’s personal story, alongside interviews conducted with other lonely people, i found kinship and, in a sense, comprehension: through her, i discovered a clearer understanding of my loneliness. White’s narrative threaded her childhood and adolsence, her college years and her previous life as a lawyer: through it all, she felt “stalked” by loneliness, as though it were a shadowy monster preparing to end her life or, at least, shade it in darkness.

that’s my life.

“’Emotional loneliness deals with the more intimate difficulties one may have,’ says Enrico DiTommaso, a psychologist at the University of New Brunswick. . . . ‘for example, with your family or romantic partner. And that’s a different kind of loneliness from the loneliness you may have in regard to your network of friends. Emotional loneliness means your emotions are internalized, and you keep them to yourself. You don’t engage in sharing those emotions with others, and they don’t share with you.’

“[. . .] While [Dr.] Weiss is now saying that some people can find companionship in intimacy, it’s still the case that most people who lack a specific tie will, at one point or another, feel socially or emotionally isolated. If they try to mend their isolation by substituting a friend for a lover, or a lover for a friend, the loneliness will persist.”

the loneliness will persist.

the loneliness will persist.

the loneliness will persist.

*

loneliness explains my presence on the Internet: my literary magazine, the collective i’ve formed, my twitter timeline. here’s where i disagree with White:

“To state the obvious: you can’t cry on a digital shoulder, you can’t hold a digital hand, you can’t take comfort in a presence that isn’t actually there. As humans, we’re hardwired to seek out a sense of togetherness and community, and it’s unlikely that Internet communications can satisfy this need.”

sometimes, people need to know that someone cares, that someone is listening to them. words have power. emails from people including Ashley Bethard and Alana Voth have, at times, saved me. i never met these women. i never cried on their shoulders or held their hands, but i found comfort.

and since White would acknowledge that forming friendships — the actual, tangible steps required to form friendships — is an unknown, unsolved equation for us all [because sitting in a coffee shop or attending a literary conference doesn’t mean strangers will clasp hands and skip away happy and beaming with friendship], sometimes we take comfort when we can get it.

that aside, Emily White successfully merged the memoir with social and pop culture analysis, medical research, and interviews. the result: Lonely is a damn good book. it’s an important book to tackle and possibly approach loneliness as a disease. and look, real talk for a moment: sooner or later, we all experience loneliness.

the next time you’re at home, alone, beating yourself up because you have no social life and people — if they knew this about you — would laugh and laugh at your loneliness, you might want to read Lonely and understand two things: you’re not alone in your loneliness and there’s no reason to be ashamed.

and find me on Twitter if you need to talk.