I Think We're Alone Now

on the variations of loneliness

Photo by Kristina Tripkovic on Unsplash

Lately, I’ve been thinking there are multitudes of loneliness. Each one comes with its own shade and sound and texture, its own flavor even. Each one collects something different from us.

For instance, I remember the inner world of my childhood. Galaxies upon galaxies, my belly full of stars. I wanted to speak, but what planets would I let loose from my mouth and who could possibly understand?

Some loneliness is lyrical, easy to romanticize, to marry with melancholy until we dissolve into its chorus, forgetting how it started.

I think of the loneliness that comes with having no visitors. What it feels like to clean your home, everything in its spot even though you’re not expecting guests. It’s a restless sort of loneliness, that keeps you fluffing pillows and straightening out knicknacks.

Then there’s the loneliness you feel when you’re surrounded by people, but they aren’t your people. This is a damp, cold loneliness. The loneliness of not belonging or feeling understood.

I think about the loneliness of motherhood. One moment your children want to sleep with you after having a nightmare, they write you misspelled mother’s day cards about how you’re the best mother in the world, and they mean it. Later they hate you, and blame you for everything. Eventually, maybe they forgive you, but they still leave you and your house and your silence and your empty table and empty arms. This though, is a loneliness I can learn to live with because it’s devastating but complete.

There’s the loneliness of being in a toxic relationship, not being able to tell anyone how bad things are because you’ve convinced yourself this is love, and if you say the words to your friends, your sister, your therapist, all the spinning plates will fall to the ground and shatter and you’ll want to carve yourself with their sharp edges.

I know the loneliness of creatives who spend days and nights pouring themselves into their poems and songs and paintings and plays hoping to reach someone, to connect through vulnerability and self-expression, only to be met with silence or apathy or judgment. This loneliness reminds me of the time I touched an electric fence and even as it shocked me, I couldn’t let go. I didn’t know my body was a conduit. I didn’t know that I’d be electric all of my life, reaching for a hand to share the voltage.

Someone will try to tell me the difference between aloneness and loneliness as if I don’t already know. As if I don’t love the peace of aloneness, the grace of aloneness, the necessity and nature of a chosen solitude. We can be alone for so long, we think we’ve healed ourselves, by ourselves.

I spent so many years in self-imposed isolation, sure that I was healing. Only to realize what I was really doing was hiding. It’s as if I sprained my ankle and convinced myself it had mended because the pain had disappeared. But really I had just stopped walking altogether.

Tonight, I met with my people, my new community over Zoom. Afterwards, we sent each other photos of our homes to feel a little less alone. We shared our walls and bookshelves, our posters and our choice of lighting. We visited each other’s homes even though we live on opposite coasts. We saw and we felt seen.

This is loneliness recalibrated. This is the transmutation of aloneness. This is connection.