Loneliness

I didn’t really comprehend the definition of loneliness until a few years ago. In the past I had the notion of what it meant to be alone or lonely or bouts of loneliness. When you are looking for some company and it’s not there and it irritates you for a while and then you find some distraction or other and you move past it. That pretty much summed up my experience of this very frightening word: we feel lonely or alone , we find distractions and voila problem solved. I had never met lady Loneliness. You know the one who stays with you, always. Like a lover she goes to sleep with you and wakes up with you and haunts your thoughts through out the whole day. Wherever you turn she is there, always by your side nudging you to look into the abyss, the bottomless abyss. Like a black hole she has us in her orbit, when we venture a little far she pulls us in and reminds us we are connected to her for eternity. But then there exists an almost romantic aspect of loneliness called solitude. They are two sides of the same coin: solitude is the yin and lady Loneliness is the yang. Notice how I always use a capital L when mentioning lady Loneliness.Lady Loneliness and solitude are in constant struggle, pushing at each other , the aggressive lady Loneliness against the gentle solitude. Of course solitude’s strength pales compares to lady Loneliness’ but still she never gets obliterated, she waits on the edges for you to finally glance her way, to finally give her a chance to show you the other side, the other side of the moon..

Solitude is radiant and beautiful and wants to show us another way, another place where we are alone but not lonely. A place of inspiration, of creativity, of completeness . A wondrous journey within, full of wonderful surprises, of smiles and twinkles in the eyes..a warmth..

Solitude visits me sometimes, I have bouts of solitude, temporary and fleeting and it feels good .. until the permanent Lady Loneliness peeks over like a lover who has been longing for me and I embrace her with open arms. Because sometimes solitude feels like something we made up to bear the unbearable reality that is lady Loneliness, to give ourselves some kind of hope, some ridiculous goal we set that we will never achieve but will not give up either . Because the alternative is too terrifying and as long as we believe there is a brighter side somewhere around the bend , we will get out of bed every day ..

Salander

“We don’t die alone, we live alone.”

I don’t know who said the above but it came to mind when I was reading your lovely post Salander, and the fact that you gendered “Loneliness” as a lady gave another dimension to her existence.  I’ve known the other lady too, (Solitude), although till now I thought of her in the male version.  And yes Solitude is painless, independent, welcomed and usually respectable but lady Loneliness causes a sharp pain in the gut that it does feel like a void.  And I think she does that because she reminds us how disconnected we can be from the one (or few) we yearn to be fully connected with. Also lady Loneliness allows us to view ourselves in the most vulnerable and hopeless state; vulnerability can initiate wonderful feelings in an individual but when it’s hand in hand with hopelessness then it’s a killer.

Alice

“Modernity’s best friend is loneliness”

an old friend of mine texted me the above a few days ago. I have known this person for more than a decade now and always thought of her as being social, independent and pretty, not alone..

Salander